Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is considered by many critics, scholars, writers, and readers to be the greatest writer in Brazilian literature.
Machado de Assis: An Introduction to One of Brazil’s Most Celebrated Writers By George Newton | 18 December, 2020
When the topic of 19
th century writers comes up, for many, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, Honoré de Balzac, Leo Tolstoy and Gustave Flaubert spring to mind; and rightly so, they all wrote influential novels and novellas, chronicles and articles that shaped their worlds and the world we live in today. However, this list is neither exhaustive nor complete.
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, revered by Brazilians as one of the country’s most influential writers, remains relatively unknown outside of the Portuguese-speaking world. In my view, his work deserves a wider international audience, and after being celebrated by Susan Sontag who wrote in 2000 that Machado de Assis was “the greatest writer ever produced in Latin America,” his work has attracted an increasingly international readership with new English translations published recently.