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Memorial de Ayres
A Novel
Brief Description
Released just two months before his death in 1908, Memorial de Ayres was Machado de Assis's final novel. Written in the form of a diary, it follows the day-to-day happenings of a retired diplomat, Counselor Ayres, during the waning years of the Brazilian empire. Ayres lives...
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Memorial de Ayres
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See moreFrom a maverick of 20th century fiction, a domestic drama set on the cusp of Brazil’s abolition of slavery
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Description
Released just two months before his death in 1908, Memorial de Ayres was Machado de Assis's final novel. Written in the form of a diary, it follows the day-to-day happenings of a retired diplomat, Counselor Ayres, during the waning years of the Brazilian empire.
Ayres lives a simple life: The most eventful parts of his week are lunch with his sister or a visit to their family cemetery. But a new love interest pushes Ayres from the confines of his quiet routine and into the warm, welcoming home of the Aguiars, an older couple who never had children. The Aguiar household is a centre of merriment, a necessary outlet for the reclusive Ayres—and where Brazil's well-to-do ponder the momentous changes afoot.
Marked by Machado's sly humour and psychological subtlety—and set in a singularly transformative moment in Brazil's history—Memorial de Ayres is a quietly prescient tale of personal and national legacy.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781324096795
Publisher: W W Norton & Co Ltd
Format: Hardback
Date Published: 04 August 2026
Country: United States
Imprint: Liveright Publishing Corporation
Contributors:
- Translated by Robin Patterson
- Translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 23.0mm
Width: 147.0mm
Height: 218.0mm
Weight: 411g
Pages: 240
About the Author
Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was born in Rio de Janeiro and is the groundbreaking author of such works as Dom Casmurro and The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson have translated the work of Lúcio Cardoso, Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen, and Clarice Lispector, among others. They live in England.
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Originally published in 1899, Dom Casmurro is widely considered to be Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis's masterpiece and a progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction. This exuberant new translation captures all the hilarious, maddening, and utterly compelling idiosyncrasies of one of Machado's most complex characters. Bento Santiago, our charismatic yet exceedingly unreliable narrator, nicknamed by his enemies Dom Casmurro, has...Hardback$5299Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
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Hailed in his lifetime as one of Latin America's greatest writers, Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was a storyteller known for his wholly innovative narrative techniques and uncanny talent for unraveling the social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Brazil. These signature traits are on full display in Quincas Borba, a novel that sees Machado satirise a rapidly changing Rio de Janeiro....Hardback$5699Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
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Hailed in his lifetime as one of Latin America's greatest writers, Machado de Assis (1839–1908) was a storyteller known for his wholly innovative narrative techniques and uncanny talent for unraveling the social and political milieu of nineteenth-century Brazil. These signature traits are on full display in Quincas Borba, a novel that sees Machado satirise a rapidly changing Rio de Janeiro....Paperback$3599Unit price /UnavailableAvailableShips in 3-4 weeks -
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"I passed away at two o'clock in the afternoon on a Friday in August in 1869, in my beautiful mansion in the Catumbi district of the city." So begins Machado de Assis's Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, told eerily from beyond the grave. First appearing in Brazil in 1881, this remarkably experimental novel was never intended by its author to...HardbackSold Out -
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Widely acclaimed as the progenitor of twentieth-century Latin American fiction, Machado de Assis (1839–1908), the son of a mulatto father and a washerwoman, and the grandson of freed slaves, was hailed in his lifetime as Brazil's greatest writer. His prodigious output of novels, plays, and stories rivalled contemporaries like Chekhov, Flaubert, and Maupassant, but, shockingly, he was barely translated into...HardbackSold Out -
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