O Alienista (Classicos Da Literatura Brasileira) (Portuguese Edition) [Paperback]

Machado de Assis (Author)

Book Description

Series: Classicos Da Literatura Brasileira | Publication Date: August 2, 2006

A sarcastic criticism of the science of its day, O Alientista tells the story of psychiatrist Simão Bacamarte, who convinces the town of Itaguaí to pay for an assylum, and begins to fill it with residents he believes insane. While the assylum at first has a few patients, it grows quickly until, after a revolt by many in the town is fought off, it includes 4/5ths of the town! Realizing something is wrong, Bacamarte releases those committed saying that those committed are infact normal. Instead, he concludes, the insane are those who are considered normal or exemplary. Then his friends convince him that he is, in fact, exemplary. . .

Product Details

• Paperback: 56 pages
• Publisher: Luso-Brazilian Books (August 2, 2006)
• Language: Portuguese
• ISBN-10: 0850515068
• ISBN-13: 978-0850515060
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 0.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,072,719 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Unlike Caleb Carr, this Alienist is literature!, May 12, 2007

By 

Jarrett Barrios (Massachusetts, USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: O Alienista (Classicos Da Literatura Brasileira) (Portuguese Edition) (Paperback)

Machado de Assis is one of the best know of Brasil's ample stable of fiction writers and certainly one of the most talented. This book is set in a fictional community where everyone needs the doctor's help for their mental illness....perhaps this was Saramago's inspiration for Blindness? This dystopia, however, is more cerebral than earthy, though its plague is just as debilitating. This man is a master of painting the character in a paragraph and it is a joy to observe in O Alienista!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 120-year old satirical allegory with contemporary relevance, June 13, 2009

By 

A. J. Sutter (Tokyo, Japan) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: O Alienista (Classicos Da Literatura Brasileira) (Portuguese Edition) (Paperback)

Many regard Machado de Assis as the greatest Brazilian writer of fiction, especially for his novels. Although he was writing in the late 19th Century and early years of the 20th, his works' stylistic and structural experimentation makes some of them, such as « Memórias Póstumas de Brás Cubas » ("Posthumous Memories of Bras Cubas," a/k/a "Epitaph of a Small Winner"), feel more like they were written in the 1960s or later.

In the case of « O Alienista », on the other hand, style and structure seem very rooted in the 19th Century (the novella was first published in 1882). But it's the plot that has contemporary relevance. It concerns a learned doctor whose expandable concept of insanity leads him to lock up more and more of his town's populace in a private asylum, usually with the acquiescence of the town's people and government. Though obviously not the kind of story that literally could happen today, I was struck by how much it resonated with some very modern techniques for marginalizing political dissent and other forms of deviance. As in all of Machado's major writings, the author's dead-on satirical skills are always in evidence: there is black humor from start to finish. Though you might need a medium-sized dictionary for a couple of words, rather than a pocket one, in general the Portuguese is not so difficult -- no need to be 100% fluent before you give this a try.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best, December 23, 2011

By 

Carlos E. V. Rezende "Rezende" (Rio de Janeiro) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: O Alienista (Portuguese Edition) (Kindle Edition)

Machado's best work,to my view.A doctor wants to cure all mental ills and,in trying to do so,he himself ends up crazy.Does exist a definite line between sanity and insanity?