Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839 – 1908) was a writer considered by many critics, scholars, writers, and readers to be the greatest name in Brazilian literature. Machado de Assis left a very extensive body of work, the result of half a century of literary labor, which includes plays, poetry, prologues, critiques, speeches, more than two hundred short stories, and several novels. ‘The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas’ (1881) is a first-person narrative considered Machado de Assis's masterpiece. The novel, extremely daring for its time, is framed as the memoirs of a character, Brás Cubas, who writes after his death. The dedication at the beginning of the book already anticipates the humor and fine irony present throughout: ‘To the worm that first gnawed at the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these posthumous memoirs.’
About the author
Joaquim Machado de Assis was born on June 21, 1839, in Morro do Livramento, one of the hills surrounding Rio de Janeiro, which is now a favela area extremely dangerous and unpleasant to walk through due to its paths of misery and violence.
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