This book makes the argument that Machado de Assis, widely hailed as one of Brazil’s greatest writers, was also a major theoretician of the modern novel form. Steeped in great works of Western literature and an imaginative reader of French Symbolist poetry, Machado creates a “new narrative,” one that will presage the groundbreaking theories of Swiss linguist Ferdinand de Saussure by showing how even the language of narrative cannot escape being elusive and ambiguous in terms of meaning.