Volume 14, Number 7 · April 9, 1970
Iron Comedian
By V.S. Pritchett
The Mandarin and Other Stories
by Eca de Queiroz, translated by Richard Franko Goldman
Ohio University, 176 pp., $5.00
The City and the Mountains
by Eça de Queiroz, translated by Roy Campbell
Ohio University, 217 pp., $5.50
The Illustrious House of Ramires
by Eça de Queiroz, translated by Ann Stevens
Ohio University, 320 pp., $5.00
Eça de Queiroz (1843-1900) is the great Portuguese novelist of the nineteenth century—not an Iberian Balzac, like Galdos but, rather, a moistened Stendhal, altogether more tender, and, despite his reformist opinions, without theories. He was a diplomat, something of a dandy and gourmet, whose career took him abroad in France, England, the Near East, Cuba, and the United States, and he was responsive to the intellectual forces that were bringing the European novel to the height of its powers. The temptations of a light and elegant cosmopolitanism must have been strong, for he is above all a novelist of wit and style, and he was amused by the banalities of diplomatic conversation.
Review, 2210 words
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