[Heteronym]

I'd compare Eça de Queiroz to Flaubert, actually. Zola was kind enough to say that of the two Eça was the best one. I wouldn't know since naturalism never interested me much. Eça is probably better known in America for The Crime of Father Amaro, which was adapted into an Oscar-nominated Mexican movie a few years ago. His masterpiece is The Maias, one of those decline-of-family-through-generations novels, which preceeded Buddenbrooks and The Forsyte Saga. Eça had a great talent for wit and satire and is best work is all about making fun of 19th century Portuguese high society. What's disturbing reading his novels today is how Portuguese society is just the same nowadays.

Anyway, for my part I prefer his chronicles and articles; he stayed in England for a few years, where he wrote the marvellous Letters from England, a collection of texts on British society and other topics of the time, like the Israel nation, the British in Egypt, Afghanistan... He had a great eye for dissecting the spirit of his age and his non-fiction is full of fascinating observations about the 19th century; in particular he made good predictions about the rise of Islamic fanaticism and the decline of the British empire.

Now the book I really like is a novella called The Mandarin. I've often noticed that the best fantasy has been written by the most realistic writers, and it's no exception with Eça. This little book is about a man who meets the Devil in his room one day to make a deal: if the man rings a bell a rich Mandarin on the other side of the world will die and the man will inherit all his fortune. The man agrees and rings the bell. Consequently he becomes rich, but he also starts seeing the dead Mandarin in front of him all the time, which drives him mad. So he goes to China to try put the dead man's spirit to rest. And hilarity ensues. Read this book if you want to learn where the word Mandarin comes from.

I should add that Borges included this book in his Personal Library.

Dedalus Books has a lot of Eça's books available in English, but alas I do not see this one in their website.