Machado de Assis: Epitaph of a Small Winner

'I am a deceased writer not in the sense of one who has written and is now deceased, but in the sense of one who has died and is now writing'. So begins the posthumous memoir of Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian. While the grave may have given Cubas the distance to examine his rather undistinguished life, it has certainly not dampened his sense of humour. Epitaph of a Small Winner is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history.