Includes entries for maps and atlases.

As so often with Eca de Queiros, the plot is simple; the fascination of the novel lies in the characters, the incidents and, above all, the warm humanity and mordant wit of this acute observer of the human condition.

Almost twenty-five years after the death of E_a de Queir_s, his son, Jos_ Maria D'E_a de Queirzs, discovered in 1924 an untitled and undated manuscript that contained neither revisions nor corrections. He painstakingly deciphered his father's nearly illegible script, titled the work, and published it as Alves & Co. This work shows Eaa de Queirus going beyond his early novels, The Sin of Fr. Amaro and Cousin Bazilio. The harsh focus of a narrow realism is now tempered by compassion for human folly. Although Eaa deals with the theme of adultery in several of his novels, only Alves & Co. examines the subject from the wronged husband's point of view. The description of Godofredo da ConceiAa? o Alves' efforts to salvage his honor while enduring the suffering that results from ridicule demonstrates E_a's mastery of satire, humor, and psychological insight.

A compassionate tale of marriage, manners, and betrayal, from the Portuguese master José Maria Eça de Queirós, the first great modern Portuguese novelist, wrote The Yellow Sofa with (in his own words) “no digressions, no rhetoric,” creating a book where “everything is interesting and dramatic and quickly narrated.” The story, a terse and seamless spoof of Victorian bourgeois morals, concerns a successful businessman who returns home to find his wife “on the yellow damask sofa, leaning in abandon on the shoulder of a man.” The man is none other than his best friend and business partner. While struggling with the need to defend his honor, he fights a stronger inner desire for domestic tranquility and forgiveness. The Yellow Sofa firmly establishes Eça de Queirós in the literary pantheon that includes Dickens, Flaubert, Balzac, and Tolstoy.