Brás Cubas dedicates his book: "To the worm who first gnawed on the cold flesh of my corpse, I dedicate with fond remembrance these Posthumous Memoirs" (Portuguese: Ao verme que primeiro roeu as frias carnes do meu cadáver dedico com saudosa lembrança estas Memórias Póstumas), which indicates that not a single person he met through his life deserved the book. The fact of being already deceased allows Brás Cubas to sharply criticize the Brazilian society and reflect on his own disillusionment, with no sign of remorse or fear of retaliation. The novel is narrated by the dead protagonist Brás Cubas, who tells his own life story from beyond the grave, noting his mistakes and failed romances. It is considered the first novel of the realist movement in Brazil. Instead of the clear and logical construction of a normal nineteenth-century realist novel, the novel makes use of surreal devices of metaphor and playful narrative construction.
Published in 1881, the novel has a unique style of short, erratic chapters shifting in tone and style. Unlike other editions, it also preserves Machado's original chapter breaks-each of the novel's 160 short chapters begins on a new page-and includes excerpts from previous versions of the novel never before published in English.The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas ( Portuguese: Memorias Posthumas de Braz Cubas, modern spelling Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas), also translated as Epitaph of a Small Winner, is a novel by the Brazilian writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (born in Rio de Janeiro City, then Imperial Capital of Brazil). This new English translation is the first to include extensive notes providing crucial historical and cultural context. Wildly imaginative, wickedly witty, and ahead of its time, the novel has been compared to the work of everyone from Cervantes to Sterne to Joyce to Nabokov to Borges to Calvino, and has influenced generations of writers around the world. He dedicates it to the worms gnawing at his corpse and tells of his failed romances and halfhearted political ambitions, serves up harebrained philosophies, and complains with gusto from the depths of his grave.
In his masterpiece, the 1881 novel The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (translated also as Epitaph of a Small Winner), the ghost of a decadent and disagreeable aristocrat decides to write his memoir. The mixed-race grandson of ex-slaves, Machado de Assis is not only Brazil's most celebrated writer but also a writer of world stature, who has been championed by the likes of Philip Roth, Susan Sontag, Allen Ginsberg, John Updike, and Salman Rushdie.
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