Novelist, poet, playwright, and short story writer Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839β1908) is widely regarded as Brazilβs 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 Caldwellβs 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 JosΓ© 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 βthe greatest writer ever produced in Latin Americaβ and whom Allen Ginsberg hailed as βanother Kafka.β Philip Roth has said of him that βlike Beckett, he is ironic about suffering.β And Harold Bloom has remarked of Machado that βheβs funny as hell.β