John?Charles Chasteen is Patterson Distinguished Term Professor of History, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

"This beautifully translated selection of stories is a wonderful introduction to Brazil’s -- and Latin America’s -- greatest writer. Chasteen has done us all a great service by providing this wonderful volume to introduce and entice readers into the wonders of Brazilian culture". -- Marshall C Eakin, Vanderbilt University

"Chasteen’s free translations convey the spirit of Machado’s stories; they feel like what Machado might have written in today’s English. Chasteen’s translation of The Alienist is exceptionally good: I have never enjoyed the story as much in Portuguese as in Chasteen’s version, which captures the narrative shifts and reversals with great timing". -- Dain Borges, University of Chicago

Chasteen has translated and edited seven short stories and one novella published during the period 1881-1906 by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, Brazil's most renowned writer and social satirist of the nineteenth century. [The] introduction. . . provides a useful, though relatively broad, snapshot of the century and historical era in which Machado de Assis lived and wrote. The brief preface to each story. . . demonstrates an interest on the part of Machado de Assis in showing everyday life, popular culture, women, male power and pretensions, and the politics of the elite. . . . Intended as an accessible and affordable introduction to Brazilian literature or as an accompaniment to a course on Latin American or Brazilian history. Recommended for classroom use and for those with an interest in world literature." -- Colonial Latin American Historical Review ,