[nannysuetle]

I discovered E?a de Queiroz through The Mandarin. And I discovered this novella through Jorge Luis Borges too. It's a dark fantasy about a man who makes a deal with the Devil to inherit a Mandarin's fortune and then is haunted by his ghost. But it's mostly a satire.

I don't know about international critics, but in Portugal they probably dislike it because: a) the Portuguese just dislike fantasy in general, although all the great Portuguese writers dabbled in it at one time or another: Pessoa, Jos? Saramago, Aquilino Ribeiro, M?rio de S?-Carneiro, Almada Negreiros; b) it's just not what people expect from a realist like E?a; c) the Portuguese don't really like humor.