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$44.00
$44.00
Set in Lisbon at the close of the nineteenth century, ‘The Maias’ is both a coming-of-age novel and a passionate romance. Our hero Carlos Maia, heir to one of the greatest fortunes in Portugal, is rich, handsome, generous and intelligent: he means to do something for his country, something useful, something that will make his beloved grandfather proud. However, Carlos is also a bit of a dilettante. He drifts along, becoming a doctor and pottering about in his laboratory, but spends more and more time riding his splendid horses or visiting the theater, having affairs or reading novels. His best friend and chief partner in crime, Ega, is likewise engaged in a long summertime of witticisms and pleasure. Carlos however is set on a dead reckoning course with fate?with the love of his life and with a terrible, terrible secret...Newly translated by the acclaimed translator Margaret Jull Costa (translator of José Saramago's ‘Blindness’), New Directions is proud to bring Eça de Queirós' brilliant prose to life for American readers for the first time.
About the Author
Eça de Queiroz was born on November 25, 1845, in Póvoa de Varzim and is considered one of the greatest novelists in all of Portuguese literature, the first and main Portuguese realist writer, a profound and insightful author of literary prose.
He entered the Law Course in 1861, in Coimbra, where he associated with many of the future representatives of the Generation of 70. After finishing his studies, he founded the newspaper , in 1866, an organ in which he began his journalistic experience. In 1871, he gave the lecture "Realism as a new expression of Art", integrated into the Lisbon Casino Conferences and a product of the aesthetic evolution that led him towards the Realism-Naturalism of Flaubert and Zola. In the same year, he began, with Ramalho Ortigão, the publication of As Farpas, satirical chronicles of inquiry into Portuguese life.
In 1872 he began his diplomatic career, during which he held the position of consul in Havana, Newcastle, Bristol, and Paris. It was, therefore, with the critical distance afforded by his experience living abroad that he conceived most of his novels, dedicated to the critique of Portuguese social life, among which stand out *O Primo Bazilio*, *O Crime do Padre Amaro*, *A Relíquia*, and *Os Maias*, the latter considered his masterpiece. He died on August 16, 1900, in Paris.
9780811216494
15,5 x 22,9 x 3,8 cm
596