The Devil's Church and Other Stories
by Machado de Assis 
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Description
The modem Brazilian short story begins with the mature work of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908), acclaimed almost unanimously as Brazil's greatest writer. Collectively, these nineteen stories are representative of Machado's unique style and world view, and this translation doubles the number of his stories previously available in English. The stories in this volume reflect Machado's post-1880 emphasis on social satire and experimentation in psychological realism. If he had show more continued to produce the moralistic love stories and parlor intrigues of his earlier fiction, Machado's legacy would have been an entertaining but inconsequent body of work. However, by 1880 he had begun a devastating satirical assault on society through his fiction. In spite of his ruthlessness, Machado does at times reveal an ironic sympathy for his characters. He is not indifferent to human conflict but uses humor and irony to stress the absurdity of these conflicts, acted out against the backdrop of an indifferent universe. Such a spectacle creates a sense of helplessness that can only inspire wistful amusement. In his technical mastery of the short story. Machado was decades ahead of his contemporaries and can still be considered more modern than most of the modernists themselves. That his stories elicit such strong and diverse reactions today is a tribute to their richness, complexity, and significance. show lessTags
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Member Reviews
In this cherry-picked collection of the Brazilian author's post-1880s short stories, upper-class residents of Rio de Janeiro struggle to maintain appearances at any cost. Made inert by their anxieties, characters watch their desires stolen by their friends, successors, or doubles.
Machado de Assis (at least in English translation) keeps reminding me of Jane Austen: both authors sidle crab-wise into their sardonic observations, seeming to say one thing while really saying something else. And maybe there is also a touch of Henry Fielding in the straight-faced hyperbole and the author-as-interlocutor. And yet neither Austen nor Fielding seem an apt comparison. Machado de Assis is always tart and concise (unlike Fielding); he can also be show more weirdly tender to his anxious, pompous protagonists (unlike the grim Austen). He is himself, I suppose. show less
Machado de Assis (at least in English translation) keeps reminding me of Jane Austen: both authors sidle crab-wise into their sardonic observations, seeming to say one thing while really saying something else. And maybe there is also a touch of Henry Fielding in the straight-faced hyperbole and the author-as-interlocutor. And yet neither Austen nor Fielding seem an apt comparison. Machado de Assis is always tart and concise (unlike Fielding); he can also be show more weirdly tender to his anxious, pompous protagonists (unlike the grim Austen). He is himself, I suppose. show less
There is a story about two vivisectionists that you will simply not forget, ever.
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678+ Works 12,866 Members
Machado de Assis has a Legacy Library. Legacy libraries are the personal libraries of famous readers, entered by LibraryThing members from the Legacy Libraries group.
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- First words
- I have just related the account of what happened to the very reverend Father Francisco in the city of Fucheu, capital of the Kingdom of Bungo, and of how our Catholic King fared in the encounter between Father Francisco and t... (show all)he Fucarandono and other bonzes who disputed the primacy of our holy Roman Catholic religion.
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction
- DDC/MDS
- 869.3 — Literature & rhetoric Spanish Literature Literatures of Portuguese and Galician languages Portuguese fiction
- LCC
- PQ9697 .M18 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Portuguese literature Provincial, local, colonial, etc. Brazil
- BISAC
Statistics
- Members
- 84
- Popularity
- 376,449
- Reviews
- 2
- Rating
- (3.64)
- Languages
- English, Portuguese (Portugal)
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 9
- ASINs
- 3
