Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839â1908) is widely regarded as Brazilâs 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 Caldwellâs 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 JosÊ 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 âthe greatest writer ever produced in Latin Americaâ and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as âanother Kafka.â Philip Roth has said of him that âlike Beckett, he is ironic about suffering.â And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that âheâs funny as hell.â