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Read the most famous classic Brazilian author: Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis.
Considered the greatest name in Brazilian literature, Machado de Assis was born in Rio de Janeiro, on July 21, 1839. Excelling mainly in novels and short stories, he also wrote poetry, plays, literary criticism and chronicles. The journalist is known for predating post-modern texts in the way they subvert the conventions of storytelling — this at the time when mainstream western novels were transitioning from Romanticism to Realism. Machado was the son of a black construction worker and a Portuguese washerwoman, making him a black author at a time when Brazil still had slavery, which was only "abolished" in 1888.
Machado's best-known work is The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (also published in English as Epitaph of a Small Winner), a novel that features a whimsical, dead narrator who calls himself a "deceased-writer" ("in the sense of one who had died and is now writing"), talks directly to the reader and insists on telling the story of his rather undistinguished life with philosophical digressions, while also questioning how he should write it. His most famous character, however, is Capitu, from Dom Casmurro, a novel that, to this day, keeps rising the following question among Brazilian readers: Did Capitu do it? — regarding the unreliable narrator's (Bentinho/the Casmurro) belief that his wife and childhood sweetheart, Capitu, cheated on him with his best friend.
The chronological order of the prompts goes beyond my need for organization, for the list of Machado's novels are usually divided in two parts: the first four, considered his most "Romantic" phase, and the last six, in which, for most critics, the author reaches the peak of his fiction and stands out as a "Realist" writer, despite the latent difficulty of fitting him into a literary school.
📍I'm also hosting challenges for: epic poems, poetry collections, anthologies, audiobooks, big books, standalones, book chains, book covers, fantasy tropes, mystery/horror, Dark Academia, Kafka's works, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Lorde's debut album, the Folklore/Evermore album and BTS' solos.
📍To easily visualize your reading year, here's the 2024 Reading Wrap Up.
📍And here's my personal guide on how to read more.
Considered the greatest name in Brazilian literature, Machado de Assis was born in Rio de Janeiro, on July 21, 1839. Excelling mainly in novels and short stories, he also wrote poetry, plays, literary criticism and chronicles. The journalist is known for predating post-modern texts in the way they subvert the conventions of storytelling — this at the time when mainstream western novels were transitioning from Romanticism to Realism. Machado was the son of a black construction worker and a Portuguese washerwoman, making him a black author at a time when Brazil still had slavery, which was only "abolished" in 1888.
Machado's best-known work is The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (also published in English as Epitaph of a Small Winner), a novel that features a whimsical, dead narrator who calls himself a "deceased-writer" ("in the sense of one who had died and is now writing"), talks directly to the reader and insists on telling the story of his rather undistinguished life with philosophical digressions, while also questioning how he should write it. His most famous character, however, is Capitu, from Dom Casmurro, a novel that, to this day, keeps rising the following question among Brazilian readers: Did Capitu do it? — regarding the unreliable narrator's (Bentinho/the Casmurro) belief that his wife and childhood sweetheart, Capitu, cheated on him with his best friend.
The chronological order of the prompts goes beyond my need for organization, for the list of Machado's novels are usually divided in two parts: the first four, considered his most "Romantic" phase, and the last six, in which, for most critics, the author reaches the peak of his fiction and stands out as a "Realist" writer, despite the latent difficulty of fitting him into a literary school.
📍I'm also hosting challenges for: epic poems, poetry collections, anthologies, audiobooks, big books, standalones, book chains, book covers, fantasy tropes, mystery/horror, Dark Academia, Kafka's works, Everything Everywhere All at Once, Lorde's debut album, the Folklore/Evermore album and BTS' solos.
📍To easily visualize your reading year, here's the 2024 Reading Wrap Up.
📍And here's my personal guide on how to read more.
Challenge Prompts
