—Jose SaramagoPortugal’s greatest novelist.
José Maria de Eça de Queirós
One of the leading intellectuals of the “Generation of 1870,” José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845–1900) wrote twenty books, founded literary reviews, and for most of his life also worked as a diplomat, in Havana, London, and Paris.
Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Translated by Margaret Jull Costa
Translated by Ann Stevens
—James Guida, The New York Review of BooksWhat does Eça’s Portugal feel like? It is dominated by hot sunny days, white trousers, dust, theater tickets and evening strolls in Sintra, roses in buttonholes and glimpses of gowned women getting in and out of coaches, gorgeous landscapes and trees and flowers, hale farmers and country maids, long conversations, cats and singing birds and orchards, pumpkins drying on a station roof, baked sweet rice, and cheese pastries.
—Kirkus“Elegantly poetic prose… Fans of Vargas Llosa and Saramago will find a kindred spirit in these pages.”
—Lorin Stein, The Paris ReviewJosé Maria de Eça de Queirós, where have you been all my life?
—London ObserverEça de Queirós ought to be up there with Balzac, Dickens, and Tolstoy as one of the talismanic names of the nineteenth century.
—Harold BloomA writer of genius.
—Michael Dirda, Washington Post Book WorldA writer of mesmerizing literary power. We should be grateful for such blessings.
—Jose SaramagoPortugal’s greatest novelist.
—Emile ZolaQueirós is far greater than my own dear master, Flaubert.
—Harold BloomThe Maias is one of the most impressive European novels of the nineteenth century, fully comparable to the most inspired novels of the great Russian, French, Italian and English masters of prose fiction. A family chronicle of intense historical insight and narrative power, The Maias reveals the decadence of Portugal in its long decline that was to culminate in the Salazar Fascist regime of the twentieth century. More than that, The Maias is a vision also of the general European malaise that eventually brought on the two World Wars and their aftermaths.