The Illustrious House of Ramires (Revived Modern Classic) - Softcover

De Eça De Queirós, José Maria

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0811226026 ISBN 13: 9780811226028

Publisher: New Directions, 2017

Synopsis

In a brilliant new translation, the wonderful penultimate novel by Eça de Queirós: “Portugal's greatest novelist” (José Saramago)

The Illustrious House of Ramires, presented here in a sparkling new translation by Margaret Jull Costa, is the favorite novel of many Eça de Queirós aficionados. This late masterpiece, wickedly funny and yet profoundly tender, centers on Gonçalo Ramires, heir to a family so aristocratic that it predates even the kings of Portugal. Gonçalo―charming but disastrously effete, idealistic but hopelessly weak―muddles through his pampered life, burdened by a grand ambition. He is determined to write a great historical novel based on the heroic deeds of his fierce medieval ancestors.  But “the record of their valor,” as The London Spectator remarked, “is ironically counterpointed by his own chicanery. A combination of Don Quixote and Walter Mitty, Ramires is continually humiliated but at the same time kindhearted. Ironic comedy is the keynote of the novel. Eça de Queirós has justly been compared with Flaubert and Stendhal."

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This story centers on Goncalo Ramires, heir to the most noble family of Portugal. Goncalo, charming but disastrously effete, muddles through his life while writing a historical novel based on the heroic deeds of his ancestors.

About the Author:

One of the leading intellectuals of the "Generation of 1870," José Maria de Eça de Queirós (1845-1900) wrote twenty books, founded literary reviews, and for most of his life also worked as a diplomat, in Havana, London, and Paris.

Margaret Jull Costa, the three-time winner of the Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize, has also won the International IMPAC Dublin Prize and the PEN/Book-of-the-Month Club Translation Prize, among many others. 

About this edition

• Publisher: New Directions
• Publication date: 2017
• ISBN 10: 0811226026
• ISBN 13: 9780811226028
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352