Machado de Assis

11 Jun, 2026 860 Spanish, Portuguese, Galician literatures

Misha Glenny and guests discuss one of the towering figures of Brazilian and world literature, Machado de Assis (1839 - 1908). He was the descendant of slaves and built his career while slavery was still in place in Brazil (abolished 1888) and many of his characters were from the slave-owning class who were also the readers of his books. At the time, those readers were delighted to see themselves represented and it was only later in the 20th Century that critics realized just how much Machado was satirising them. While he brings 19th Century Brazil vividly to life, Machado’s works transcend time and place and, according to Salman Rushdie, they seem to have been written yesterday not 100 years ago.

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Guests

  • Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva No other episodes
    Associate Professor in Brazilian Studies at University College London
  • Professor Claire Williams No other episodes
    Professor of Brazilian Literature and Culture at the Faculty of Modern Languages at the University of Oxford
  • Viviane Carvalho da Annunciacao No other episodes
    Affiliated Lecturer at the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics at the University of Cambridge

Reading list

  • Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis
    Lamonte Aidoo and Daniel F. Silva (eds.) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016) Google Books →
  • The Brazilian Othello of Machado de Assis: A Study of Dom Casmurro
    Helen Caldwell (University of California Press, 1960) Google Books →
  • The Contradictions of Science in Machado de Assis
    Viviane Carvalho da Annunciacao (Liverpool University Press, 2025) Google Books →
  • The Looking-Glass: Essential Stories
    Machado de Assis (trans. Daniel Hahn) (Pushkin Press, 2022) Google Books →
  • 26 Stories
    Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson) (Liveright, 2019) Google Books →
  • The Collected Stories of Machado de Assis
    Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson) (Liveright, 2018) Google Books →
  • The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
    Machado de Assis (trans. Flora Thomson-Deveaux) (Penguin, 2020) Google Books →
  • The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas
    Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson) (Liveright, 2020) Google Books →
  • Quincas Borba
    Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson) (WW Norton & Co, 2024) Google Books →
  • Dom Casmurro
    Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson) (WW Norton & Co, 2024) Google Books →
  • Memorial de Ayres
    Machado de Assis (trans. Margaret Jull Costa and Robin Patterson) (Liveright, August 2026) Google Books →
  • Machado de Assis: Fiction and History
    John Gledson (Francis Cairns, 1984)
  • Machado de Assis: Reflections on a Brazilian Master Writer
    Richard Graham (ed.) (University of Texas Press, 1999) Google Books →
  • The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics
    James N. Green, Victoria Langland and Lilia Moritz Schwarcz (eds.) (Duke University Press, 2019) Google Books →
  • The Penguin Book of Brazilian Short Stories
    Daniel Hahn and Padma Viswanathan (eds.) (Penguin, January 2027)
  • A History of the Brazilian Novel
    Mario Higa (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, August 2026) Google Books →
  • Machado de Assis: A Literary Life
    K. David Jackson (Yale University Press, 2015) Google Books →
  • Modern Brazil: A Very Short Introduction
    Anthony W. Pereira (Oxford University Press, 2020) Google Books →
  • A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism: Machado de Assis
    Roberto Schwarz (trans. John Gledson) (Duke University Press, 2001) Google Books →
  • Brazil: A Biography
    Lilia M. Schwarcz and Heloisa M. Starling (eds.) (Allen Lane, 2018)
  • Machado De Assis's Philosopher or Dog?: From Serial to Book Form
    Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva (Routledge, 2010) Google Books →
  • Comparative Perspectives on the Rise of the Brazilian Novel
    Ana Claudia Suriani da Silva and Sandra Guardini Vasconcelos (eds.) (UCL Press, 2020) Google Books →
  • The Black Butterfly: Brazilian Slavery and the Literary Imagination
    Marcus Wood (West Virginia University Press, 2019) Google Books →

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Programme ID: m002xgz1

Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m002xgz1

Auto-category: 869.3 (Brazilian literature)