Dom Casmurro

Author:   Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis ,  John Gledson ,  John A. Gledson (Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Liverpool)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Edition:   New edition
ISBN:  

9780195103083


Pages:   286
Publication Date:   26 February 1998
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
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Dom Casmurro


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Overview

"""A palm tree, seeing me troubled and divining the cause, murmured in its branches that there was nothing wrong with fifteen-year old boys getting into corners with girls of fourteen; quite the contrary, youths of that age have no other function, and corners were made for that very purpose. It was an old palm-tree, and I believed in old palm-trees even more than in old books. Birds, butterflies, a cricket trying out its summer song, all the living things of the air were of the same opinion."" So begins this extraordinary love story between Bento and Capitu, childhood sweethearts who grow up next door to each other in Rio de Janeiro in the 1850s. Like other great nineteenth century novels--The Scarlet Letter, Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary--Machado de Assis's Dom Casmurro explores the themes of marriage and adultery. But what distinguishes Machado's novel from the realism of its contemporaries, and what makes it such a delightful discovery for English-speaking readers, is its eccentric and wildly unpredictable narrative style. Far from creating the illusion of an orderly fictional ""reality,"" Dom Casmurro is told by a narrator who is disruptively self-conscious, deeply subjective, and prone to all manner of marvelous digression. As he recounts the events of his life from the vantage of a lonely old age, Bento continually interrupts his story to reflect on the writing of it: he examines the aptness of an image or analogy, considers cutting out certain scenes before taking the manuscript to the printer, and engages in a running, and often hilarious, dialogue with the reader. ""If all this seems a little emphatic, irritating reader,"" he says, ""it's because you have never combed a girl's hair, you've never put your adolescent hands on the young head of a nymph..."" But the novel is more than a performance of stylistic acrobatics. It is an ironic critique of Catholicism, in which God appears as a kind of divine accountant whose ledgers may be balanced in devious as well as pious ways. It is also a story about love and its obstacles, about deception and self-deception, and about the failure of memory to make life's beginning fit neatly into its end. First published in 1900, Dom Casmurro is one of the great unrecognized classics of the turn of the century by one of Brazil's greatest writers. The popularity of Machado de Assis in Latin America has never been in doubt and now, with the acclaim of such critics and writers as Susan Sontag, John Barth, and Tony Tanner, his work is finally receiving the worldwide attention it deserves. Newly translated and edited by John Gledson, with an afterword by Joao Adolfo Hansen, this Library of Latin America edition is the only complete, unabridged, and annotated translation of the novel available. It offers English-speaking readers a literary genius of the rarest kind."

Full Product Details

Author:   Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis ,  John Gledson ,  John A. Gledson (Department of Hispanic Studies, University of Liverpool)
Publisher:   Oxford University Press Inc
Imprint:   Oxford University Press Inc
Edition:   New edition
Dimensions:   Width: 14.70cm , Height: 2.50cm , Length: 22.00cm
Weight:   0.449kg
ISBN:  

9780195103083


ISBN 10:   0195103084
Pages:   286
Publication Date:   26 February 1998
Audience:   General/trade ,  College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General ,  Undergraduate
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In stock   Availability explained
We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately.

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Reviews

A classic of world literature refashioned into modern and reader-friendly English. --Library Journal The lightning bolts flung down at us by the gods are meant to wound. What reach us from Machado's Parnassus are, instead, flashes of truth that make the darkness recede. --Lauren Weiner, The New Criterion Machado offers the infectious pleasures of a 19th-century writer who is more modern than some of our so-called moderns.... The mystery of Machado is that he combines distanced irony with intimations of encroaching darkness, self-reflexive antics with soul. --Bill Marx, Boston Globe Machado de Assis is Brazil's greatest novelist, and ranks high among the most appealing writers in the world.... Though he lived mainly in the 19th century, Machado possesses an almost postmodern sensibility--playful, ironic and tricky. --Michael Dirda, Book World We see Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis' genius in two new, fresh translations of The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas and Dom Casmurro. These satiric novels stand like beacons in the literary landscape of 19th century Latin America, a landscape inhabited by derivative novelists and great poets.... Machado's writing hasn't aged, and today's readers will find his voice both familiar and strangely new.... Oxford University Press is to be congratulated for sponsoring translations worthy of the original. --The New York Times Book Review An excellent work for literature and history courses. --Sonny Davis, Texas A&M University


Oxford's newly launched Library of Latin America wisely begins with attractive new editions of the fiction of Brazil's greatest novelist. Originally published in 1900, this novel is the first-person confession of Bento Santiago, a middle-aged lawyer whose long marriage to the woman of his dreams (the delightfully named, and delightful, Capitu) falls to relieve his myriad frustrations and suspicions. The self-tormenting narrator's explosive, digressive revelations of his own vanity and shortsightedness make for both a piquant criticism of the romantic temperament and an unforgettably wry character study. (Kirkus Reviews)


Author Information

About the Translator and Editor: John Gledson is Professor Emeritus, Department of Hispanic Studies at the University of Liverpool. He has written two books and numerous articles on Machado de Assis. Joao Adolfo Hansen is a highly-regarded Brazilian literary critic.

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