Cousin Bazilio

By Eça de Queirós and José Maria Eça de Queiroz

Book Overview

Cousin Bazilio is a tale of sexual folly and hypocrisy and vividly depicts life in nineteenth-century lisbon. Eca gives us a whole gallery of characters from Bazilio, the suave villain to Jorge, the smugly uxorious husband, from Luiza, the bored empty-headed wife to Juliana, the plain, ailing maidservant desperate, by whatever means, to grab some of life's little luxuries, from Leopoldina, nicknamed' the Ever-Open Door', to Joana the cook and her affair with the tubercular carpenter who lives opposite, and the voluminous Dona Felidade who nurses an entirely unrequited passion for the unbearably pompous Acacio, who lives in concubinage with his much younger housekeeper, who is also having an affair...

'Adultery, blackmail, sentimentality and lust all come under Eca's scrutiny. Sins are scattered amid a gallery of vivid characters, central of which are the adulterous heroine, her first love, the cuckolded husband, and most importantly, the maid. This cunning portrayal of life below stairs casts a cold eye across the hypocrisy of 'respectability, ' recreating the sultry summer heat of Lisbon and the tensions and passions underlying both the refinements of the wealthy and the loyalty of the servants. Sheer brilliance.' The Good Book Guide

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1910213373
• ISBN13: 9781910213377
• Release Date: November 2016
• Publisher: Dedalus
• Length: 439 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.2" x 4.9" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

Superb novel - Magnificent translation

I ordered this by chance, to read during a holiday in Lisbon. What a revelation! This is a great late XIX Century novel about bourgeois adultery. It belongs on the same shelf as Madame Bovary and Anna Karenina, but it is even closer to Emile Zola's "La Curee." Luiza, a lovely young wife, is led into temptation by her worldly cousin Bazilio, an awful rake. Consequently, Luiza is blackmailed by her ghastly maid Juliana. The struggle between the two women goes ever deeper. I won't betray any more of the plot, except to say that there are many wonderful secondary characters, several hilarious moments (although the whole novel is built toward a tragic ending), and a lot of political subtext. Reading it in Lisbon was a extra-special treat, as I carried the book through the very streets where it takes place. Once I was done with it, I picked up another Queiroz at the Lisbon FNAC for the flight back, translated in French this time. Wow! What a letdown: all choppy and strangely overdone. That proved to me - a contrario - that Margaret Jull Costa did a fantastic job translating Cousin Bazilio. I never was conscious I was reading a translation. I will read more novels by Queiroz, but only if translated by Margaret Jull Costa.