Customer Reviews

The Mandarin (European Classics)

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"The mandarin" is something between a short story and a novella. As happens with Machado de Assis, everybody who is interested in good literature should learn portuguese to read Eça de Queiroz in his original language. The author of "The Maias", "The crime of Father Amaro", "A cidade e as serras", among many others, is the most revered realism writer in portuguese literature, and this is no undeserved praise.

"The mandarin" is, literally, one fantastic tale. Like many other Queiroz's characters, Teodoro is a divided man, split between his simple, plain life as a public servant, and his dreams of greatness, success and fortune. Suddenly, during one lonely night, a fantastic character (maybe the demon ?) offers him a little bell. If Teodoro choses to ring this little bell, some rich Mandarin in the ends of China will die, leaving Teodoro all his money. Believing it a dream, Teodoro doesn't hesitate to ring the little bell, but in fact an incredible sum of money is brought to him, along with news that the far-away Mandarin has indeed died in China. After a while, consumed by regret and living a boring (although rich) life, Teodoro decides to go to China to try and fix his mistake.

Using his usual dry and intelligent sarcasm, Eça de Queiroz is able to create a complex tale and a complex character in less than 100 pages. In portuguese, his phrases and sentences flow so easily in the eyes (and ears, if you're reading it aloud - this is a good idea) of the reader that this story looks like a chant.

If you've never read Eça, this one is a short and good way to start. After that, move on to his more complex works. No regrets.

Grade 8.0/10

This is a collection of short stories by a master writer, sadly little known in the English-speaking world. "The Mandarin" is the first one and the best. An obscure Portuguese bureaucrat is visited by a demon, who tells him that, if he shakes a little bell the demon carries, in that moment a Chinese Mandarin will die, leaving him all his fortune. The man does it, and immediately the fortune of the Mandarin appears before him. But he won't be happy: the man begins to be haunted by remorse and regret, and so he decides to go to China to look for the Mandarin's family, now disposseses, and give them back their father's fortune. What follows is an extraordinary and unbelievable tale of soul-searching, of the punishment against ambition and irresponsibility, always with a dark-humored touch.

"The catastrophe" is a story against civic apathy and in favor of patriotism. "Memories of the gallows" is the least accomplished of the volume, slow and sentimental. "The treasure" is an excellent tale about unlimited ambition. "The dead" is narrated in a Medieval-like style. It's the fantastic story of a young man who gets involved in a turmoil of passion and jealousy, from which he's rescued by a dead, hung man. It's terrorific and very well written; the images impossible to forget.

This book was my introduction to one really great writer, whose famous novels I look forward to read. His main characteristics are: a fluent domination of very different styles and environments, as well as a fine use of irony and sarcasm.

The other two reviews on this page are of different books, and the editorial excerpt isn't even in English! To clear things up: The Daedalus Press book is a collection of four stories, put into English by Margaret Jull Costa (not Cozta!), whose translations of Eca de Queiros are the best available. None of the four stories have the breadth or depth of "The Maias" but each of them is exceptional in its own way, and they're amazingly varied. The title story, something indeed of a novella, is a moral fable with satirical overtones that includes some brilliant sketches of the aimless world of late nineteenth-century diplomacy --something Eca knew very well, as he was a diplomat by profession. The other stories are shorter, one of them a sad comedy of manners and self-delusion, another a superb and deeply-felt essay in mediaevalism, as spooky as Hans Christian Andersen's "The Traveling Companion," and the last a study of idealism and romantic devotion narrated by a retired professor of German Idealist philosophy. The range of Eca's work is impressive, and the vividness of his writing and his economy of means are lessons for anyone who loves great writing. We English speakers are greatly in Ms. Costa's debt for making the work of such a great writer available.