The Looking-Glass

Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is widely regarded as among the greatest Brazilian writers of all time. He was born to a poor family in Rio de Janerio and, with little formal education, took work as a typographer's apprentice and began to publish at age 15. Machado enjoyed a successful career as a writer of romantic novels and a government bureaucrat. In the late 1870s he suffered a severe bout of illness, after which he wrote the ironic, complex masterpieces for which he is now famous, including The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas and Dom Casmurro. Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor, and translator of more than sixty books. His work includes translations from Europe, Africa, and the Americas. He has won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the International Dublin Literary Award, and the Blue Peter Book Award and been shortlisted for the Man Booker International Prize, among many others.