[nannysuetle]

The Maias is the greatest Portuguese novel ever written and E?a de Queiroz is one of the unjustly-forgotten giants of 19th century literature. This novel is a lovely portrait of Portuguese society at te turn of the century; to talk of society is to talk of Lisbon, of course, the heart of the country. And what E?a (we don't call him de Queiroz) shows, is that Lisbon was just full of futile, vacuous, ignorant people who borrowed all styles and fashions from foreign countries, had no intellectual or cultural interests, talked a lot about doing great things, but in the end brought nothing to completion.

Just like nowadays.

E?a is so admired because he managed to verbalise the essence of the Portuguese. I don't think any other writer ever understood us so well as E?a did. Or had so much fun ridiculing our little ticks and mentality.

Cousin Basilio is a worthy choice for his next novel. But anything by E?a is really good. My favorites, for their humour and uncompromising satire, would be The Relic and To The Capital; this one is similar to The Maias, but for literature lovers it has the additional pleasure of seeing E?a write about a pretentious writer who think he's great.