His excellent prose glides through real experience and private dream in a manner that is leading on toward the achievements of Proust.

V.S. Pritchett

A compassionate tale of marriage, manners, and betrayal, from the Portuguese master

The Yellow Sofa

by José Maria de Eça de Queirós

José Maria Eça de Queirós, the first great modern Portuguese novelist, wrote The Yellow Sofa with, as he said, “no digressions, no rhetoric,” where “everything is interesting and dramatic and quickly narrated.” The story, a terse and seamless spoof of Victorian bourgeois morals, concerns Godofredo Alves, a successful, buoyant businessman who returns home to find his wife “on the yellow damask sofa… leaning in abandon on the shoulder of a man…” The man is none other than Machado, his best friend and business partner. Godofredo struggles with the public need to defend his honor, and a stronger inner desire for forgiveness and domestic tranquillity. The Babel Guide to Portuguese Fiction notes, “The genius of this book is how Eça captures all the emotional fluctuations… and with such accuracy. The result is an enjoyable humorous novella that is simultaneously breathtakingly ironic.” The Yellow Sofa firmly establishes Eça de Queirós in the literary pantheon that includes Dickens, Flaubert, Balzac and Tolstoy.

Paperback(published Apr, 19 2016)

ISBN
9780811222181
Price US
13.95
Price CN
17.95
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
128
Portrait of José Maria de Eça de Queirós

José Maria de Eça de Queirós

19th century Portuguese diplomat and writer

His excellent prose glides through real experience and private dream in a manner that is leading on toward the achievements of Proust.

V.S. Pritchett