Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839тАУ1908) is widely regarded as BrazilтАЩs 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 CaldwellтАЩs 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 Jos├й 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 тАЬthe greatest writer ever produced in Latin AmericaтАЭ and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as тАЬanother Kafka.тАЭ Philip Roth has said of him that тАЬlike Beckett, he is ironic about suffering.тАЭ And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that тАЬheтАЩs funny as hell.тАЭ