Events

The ILLA members Alva Martínez Teixeiro and Carlos Paulo Martínez Pereiro have published the book As histórias do futuro de Machado de Assis. Uma novela e vinte e quatro contos que contam.

This first volume, which inaugurates the “Através do Brasil” collection by Através Editora, features twenty-five representative works of the finest short fiction by Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839–1908). These are stories with a strong sense of relevance today—texts in which, from the past, the brilliant writer managed to speak and narrate to the successive futures to come; stories, ultimately, that always help us better understand ourselves.

Over more than five decades, all these tales—crafted with excellence—were published in the periodical press between 1881 and 1907, and collected (or, in some cases, released for the first time) in the volumes Papéis Avulsos (1882), Histórias sem Data (1884), Várias Histórias (1886), Páginas Recolhidas (1889), and Relíquias da Casa Velha (1906).

The vast fictional universe of this brilliant author’s short works, more than a century later, still speaks profoundly of the *umana cosa*—the human condition in Boccaccio’s terms—to our hearts and minds. It undoubtedly deserves a place in our modern sensibility for the many times it has authentically addressed our feelings, virtues, contradictions, and limitations.

As professor João Cezar de Castro Rocha of UERJ states in the preface, “é um livro-presente para o público contemporâneo na forma de um xadrez de palavras, para evocar a eloquente metáfora do padre Antônio Vieira – uma vez que aludimos à História do Futuro”.