Roberto Schwarz, born in Vienna in 1938, grew up in São Paulo, studying there and later in the United States and France. His books in English include Two Girls, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture and A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism, the central component of his study of Machado.

• Brazilian culture - nationalism by elimination; misplaced ideas - literature and society in late-19th-century Brazil; beware of alien ideologies; the importing of the novel to Brazil and its contradictions in the work of Alencar; Machado de Assis - a biographical sketch; complex, modern, national and negative; the poor woman and her portraitist; "Who Can Tell Me That This Character is Not Brazil?"; the cart, the tram and the modernist poet; culture and politics in Brazil, 1964-1969; cinema and "The Guns"; on "A Man Marked Out To Die"; is there a Third World aesthetic?; Anatol Rosenfeld, a foreign intellectual; a historic landmark; Chico Buarque's new novel.

Roberto Schwarz's essays are not only a brilliant analysis of Brazilian literature and art, but above all a bold, original and creative contribution to a critical theory of literature, to a materialist interpretation of cultural history

Roberto Schwarz, born in Vienna in 1938, grew up in São Paulo, studying there and later in the United States and France. His books in English include Two Girls, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture and A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism, the central component of his study of Machado.

• Brazilian culture - nationalism by elimination; misplaced ideas - literature and society in late-19th-century Brazil; beware of alien ideologies; the importing of the novel to Brazil and its contradictions in the work of Alencar; Machado de Assis - a biographical sketch; complex, modern, national and negative; the poor woman and her portraitist; "Who Can Tell Me That This Character is Not Brazil?"; the cart, the tram and the modernist poet; culture and politics in Brazil, 1964-1969; cinema and "The Guns"; on "A Man Marked Out To Die"; is there a Third World aesthetic?; Anatol Rosenfeld, a foreign intellectual; a historic landmark; Chico Buarque's new novel.

Roberto Schwarz's essays are not only a brilliant analysis of Brazilian literature and art, but above all a bold, original and creative contribution to a critical theory of literature, to a materialist interpretation of cultural history

Roberto Schwarz, born in Vienna in 1938, grew up in São Paulo, studying there and later in the United States and France. His books in English include Two Girls, Misplaced Ideas: Essays on Brazilian Culture and A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism, the central component of his study of Machado.

• Brazilian culture - nationalism by elimination; misplaced ideas - literature and society in late-19th-century Brazil; beware of alien ideologies; the importing of the novel to Brazil and its contradictions in the work of Alencar; Machado de Assis - a biographical sketch; complex, modern, national and negative; the poor woman and her portraitist; "Who Can Tell Me That This Character is Not Brazil?"; the cart, the tram and the modernist poet; culture and politics in Brazil, 1964-1969; cinema and "The Guns"; on "A Man Marked Out To Die"; is there a Third World aesthetic?; Anatol Rosenfeld, a foreign intellectual; a historic landmark; Chico Buarque's new novel.

Roberto Schwarz's essays are not only a brilliant analysis of Brazilian literature and art, but above all a bold, original and creative contribution to a critical theory of literature, to a materialist interpretation of cultural history