Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson's critically acclaimed translations of Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas and The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis introduced a new generation of readers to one of Brazil's most ground-breaking authors. Hailed as "the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America" (Susan Sontag), Machado's genius is on full display in this fresh translation of the 1899 classic Dom Casmurro. In his supposed memoir, Bento Santiago, an engaging yet unreliable narrator, suspects his wife, Capitu, of having an affair with his closest friend. Withdrawn and obsessive, our antihero mines the origins of their love story: from childhood neighbours playing innocently in the backyard to his brief spell in a seminary to marriage and the birth of their child-whom, he fears, does not resemble him. A gripping domestic drama brimming with Machado's signature humour, this is another stunningly modern tale from the progenitor of twentieth-century fiction.

About the Author
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) was born in Rio de Janeiro and, as well as his seven short-story collections, wrote such groundbreaking novels as Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas, Dom Casmurro, Quincas Borba and The Alienist. Margaret Jull Costa, who has translated Javier Marias and Jose Saramago, lives in England. Robin Patterson has translated Jose Luandino Vieira and lives in England.

Reviews
"It is one of the unexpected services of Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson's new translation of DOM CASMURRO that they have helped me solve the mystery of my first impression. As I was reading their translation, I pulled out the first one I had read, one of the many that came before. I saw that the difficulty of translating Machado is not that his language is so precise and clear: That would seem to make the task easy. The challenge for the translator is that the writer uses precise and clear phrases ("Good morning!") in a way that turns their precision and clarity against them and suggests something else. Rather than letting these lines stand, slyly winking and furtively smiling, the earlier translator had tried to nudge the reader too firmly toward that something else . . . More than perhaps any book I know, "Dom Casmurro" has to be read more than once. It teaches us to read in much the same way that Vermeer teaches us to see - by looking, and then looking again." -- Benjamin Moser - The New York Times Book Review



Book Information
ISBN 9781324090700
Author Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis
Format Hardback
Page Count 288
Imprint WW Norton & Co
Publisher WW Norton & Co
Weight(grams) 457g
Dimensions(mm) 218mm * 147mm * 28mm