by Eça de Queirós

José Maria Eça de Queirós (1845-1900) has been acclaimed Portugal’s greatest nineteenth- century novelist and one of the most outstanding writers of the Portuguese language of all time. Born out of wedlock in Póvoa de Varzim, a small fishing town in northern Portugal, Eça de Queirós never lived with his parents (who would officially acknowledge him only at the time of his own wedding in 1886) but was raised by his father’s family until he attended a boarding school in Oporto, Portugal’s second largest city. Subsequently he studied law at the prestigious Coimbra University, where he became deeply interested in literature and intrigued by sociopolitical reformist ideas. He practiced law briefly, then traveled to the Orient, and finally pursued a diplomatic career that resulted in his living abroad in Cuba, England, and France...