Machado de Assis: A Literary Life (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780300180824)

Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is widely regarded as Brazil's greatest writer, although his work is still too little read outside his native country. In this first comprehensive English-language examination of Machado since Helen Caldwell's seminal 1970 study, K. David Jackson reveals Machado de Assis as an important world author, one of the inventors of literary modernism whose writings profoundly influenced some of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century, including Jos Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, and Donald Barthelme. Jackson introduces a hitherto unknown Machado de Assis to readers, illuminating the remarkable life, work, and legacy of the genius whom Susan Sontag called "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America" and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as "another Kafka." Philip Roth has said of him that "like Beckett, he is ironic about suffering." And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that "he's funny as hell."

Author: K. David Jackson
ISBN-10: 0300180829
ISBN-13: 9780300180824
Publisher: Yale University Press
Language: English
Published: 05/26/2015
Pages: 360
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.40lbs
Size: 9.40h x 6.30w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 11/01/2015