Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839โ1908) is widely regarded as Brazilโs greatest writer, although his work is still too little read outside his native country. In this first comprehensive English-language examination of Machado since Helen Caldwellโs seminal 1970 study, K. David Jackson reveals Machado de Assis as an important world author, one of the inventors of literary modernism whose writings profoundly influenced some of the most celebrated authors of the twentieth century, including Josรฉ Saramago, Carlos Fuentes, and Donald Barthelme. Jackson introduces a hitherto unknown Machado de Assis to readers, illuminating the remarkable life, work, and legacy of the genius whom Susan Sontag called โthe greatest writer ever produced in Latin Americaโ and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as โanother Kafka.โ Philip Roth has said of him that โlike Beckett, he is ironic about suffering.โ And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that โheโs funny as hell.โ