Finding the Humor in the Macabre in “The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas”

“When you pick up a book from the late nineteenth century, you might prepare yourself to read a musty language that has aged so much it feels otherworldly. Machado de Assis’s books, however, are not like that. His books not only feel evergreen, but they also seem to anticipate the taste of a reader from a century and a half later.”