JOAQUIM MARIA MACHADO DE ASSIS (1839-1908) was a pioneer Brazilian novelist, poet, playwright and short story writer whose work is rooted in the traditions of European culture and transcends the influence of Brazilian literary schools.  Widely acclaimed as the progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, he was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer.  In 1897 he founded and became the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Letters.

Born in the outskirts of Rio -- the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, and the grandson of freed slaves -- Machado displayed a precocious interest in books and languages and, despite his impoverished background, became a well-known intellectual figure in Brazil's capital by his early twenties.  Urbane, aristocratic, cosmopolitan, aloof, and cynical, he writes with a deep-rooted pessimism and disillusionment that might be unbearable were it not disguised by daring narrative techniques and coolly ironic voice.

In his first novels, characterized to some extent by sentimentality, Machado maintained affinities with the Romantic school.  By the 1880s, he was writing in a strikingly original style that marked a clear break with the literary conventions of the day.  Among his notable works are THE POSTHUMOUS MEMOIRS OF BRÁS CUBAS (1881), an eccentric first-person narrative with a flow of free association and digression, and considered the first romance of the realist movement in Brazil.  QUINCAS BORBA (1891) is considered by modern critics to be the second of Machado's realist trilogy, in which the author was concerned with using pessimism and irony to criticize the customs and philosophy of his time, in the process parodying scientism, Social Darwinism, and Comte's positivism, although he did not remove all Romantic elements from the plot.

DOM CASMURRO (1899), now widely regarded as his masterpiece, is a haunting and terrible journey into a mind warped by jealousy.  Critic Afranio Coutinho called it "maybe Brazil's greatest representative piece of writing" and "one of the best books ever written in the Portuguese language, if not the best one to date."

The COLLECTED STORIES (2018) brings together all the stories contained in the seven collections published during his lifetime.  Predominantly set in the late nineteenth-century aspiring world of Rio de Janeiro, the postcolonial realism of Machado's stories anticipates a dominant theme of twentieth-century literature. Readers witness the bourgeoisie of Rio both at play, and, occasionally, attempting to be serious, as depicted by the chief character of "The Alienist," who makes naively grandiose claims for his Brazilian hometown at the expense of the cultural capitals of Europe.  Signifiers of new wealth and social status abound through the landmarks that populate Machado's stories, enlivening a world in the throes of transformation.


The following books are in ePUB and/or PDF format as indicated:


== NOVELS ==

* Counselor Ayres' Memorial (California, 1982).  Helen Caldwell, trans. -- PDF
* Dom Casmurro (California, 1971).  Helen Caldwell, trans. -- PDF
* Dom Casmurro (Oxford, 1997).  John Gledson, trans. -- ePUB
* Dom Casmurro (Peter Owen, 2016).  R.L. Scott-Buccleuch, trans. -- ePUB
* Epitaph of a Small Winner (Noonday, 1952).  William Grossman, trans. -- PDF
* Esau and Jacob (California, 1965).  Helen Caldwell, trans. -- PDF
* Esau and Jacob (Oxford, 2000).  E. Lowe, trans. -- ePUB + PDF (by @Mohamed5438)
* Hand and the Glove, The (Kentucky, 1970).  Albert Bagby, trans. -- PDF
* Helena (California, 1984).  Helen Caldwell, trans. -- PDF
* Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (Oxford, 1997).  G. Rabassa, trans. -- ePUB + PDF
* Quincas Borba (Oxford, 1998).  Gregory Rabassa, trans. -- ePUB


== SHORT STORIES ==

* Alienist & Other Stories, The (Hackett, 2013).  John Chasteen, trans. -- ePUB
* Alienist, The (Melville House, 2012).  William Grossman, trans. -- ePUB
* Brazilian Tales (Four Seas, 1921).  Isaac Goldberg, trans. -- PDF
* Chapter of Hats, A (Bloomsbury, 2014).  John Gledson, trans. -- ePUB
* Collected Stories (Liveright, 2018).  Margaret Costa & Robin Patterson, trans. -- ePUB
* Psychiatrist & Other Stories, The (California, 1963). Grossman & Caldwell, trans. -- ePUB

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