This book is designed not only to call new attention to this master but also to raise questions about the nature of literature itself and current alternative views on how it can be approached. Four essays address the question of Machado's "realism" in the five masterpiece novels of his maturity, especially Dom Casmurro. The noted contributors include John Gledson (University of Liverpool), Joao Adolfo Hansen (Universidade de Sao Paulo), Sidney Chalhoub (Universidade de Campinas), and Daphne Patai (University of Massachusetts at Amherst).

Dain Borges of the University of California at San Diego says, "(This is the) only collection explicitly debating the question that polarizes contemporary Brazilian criticism of Machado de Assis: was he a sophisticated late realist, or was he a pioneering anti-realist, even a postmodernist? The (essayists) marshal their evidence and argument with virtuosity and arrive at sharply opposing conclusions."