8 h 43 minAudiobook11 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if your new fortune buys every kind of attention except the affection you crave?
Rubião, a provincial schoolteacher in Barbacena, cares for the eccentric philosopher Quincas Borba. When he inherits the philosopher’s wealth and the care of his dog, also named Quincas Borba, he heads for Rio de Janeiro. Money promises comfort and importance. But Rubião has little experience of the people who gather around it.
Cristiano Palha draws close and becomes involved in managing Rubião’s money. Palha’s wife, Sofia, becomes the focus of Rubião’s consuming romantic hopes. Around them, Machado de Assis builds a world of dinners, gossip, and careful appearances. Friendship, business, and desire become dangerously tangled, while a questioning narrator moves between sympathy and mockery.
What you’ll discover
- A fortune without safety Follow a generous man who mistakes interested attention for the promise of a secure life.
- Love clouded by hope Watch Rubião’s hopes gather around Sofia, whose social skill gives him little certainty.
- A philosophy of winners Encounter Humanitism, Quincas Borba’s system that treats conflict and suffering as parts of a larger struggle.
- Society under sharp scrutiny Enter dinners and visits where ambition shapes appearances and people overlook what matters.
- Laughter close to pain Feel the pull of dark comedy that makes the pursuit of money both absurd and cruel.
Who will love it
You will enjoy this book if you like witty narrators, studies of social climbing, love triangles seen with a cool eye, stories set in nineteenth-century cities, and characters whose small vanities and big dreams drive the plot.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A dying philosopher teaches Humanitas
- A strange will makes Rubião rich
- A train ride begins a dangerous friendship
- A night in the garden goes wrong
- Politics, partnership and a new circle of friends
- Rubião spends, hopes and doubts
- A wedding, a fall in fortune, and a shift in the mind
- What the book says about wealth, vanity and delusion
- A narrator who talks to you
Who’s who
- RubiãoA kind, simple teacher from Minas who inherits a fortune and a dog, and wants to enjoy life in Rio and win Sophia.
- Quincas Borba (the philosopher)A dying, eccentric thinker who invents Humanitas, leaves Rubião everything, and asks only that his dog be treated like a man.
- Quincas Borba (the dog)A loyal dog that carries the philosopher's name and follows Rubião everywhere, loving him whether he is kind or not.
- SophiaA beautiful, clever and ambitious woman who enjoys admiration, keeps her heart locked, and wants a higher place in society.
- Cristiano PalhaSophia's husband, a broker and businessman who spends more than he earns and cultivates Rubião for his money.
- Carlos MariaA handsome, vain young man who loves to be admired and treats everyone as an audience for himself.
- CamachoA lawyer and newspaper owner who longs for a ministry and draws Rubião into politics and spending.
- Maria BenedictaSophia's plain, honest country cousin, who learns city ways and adores Carlos Maria in silence.
Formats and delivery
- eBook
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 8 h 43 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 11 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print paperback
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Large print hardcover
- 8.5 × 11 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
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Quincas Borba
by Machado de Assis · 1891
A kind teacher inherits a fortune and a dog, then moves to Rio, where love and flattery cost him dearly.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
Quincas Borba is a novel by the Brazilian writer Machado de Assis, published in the 1890s as a follow-up to The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas. It follows a schoolteacher from the hills of Minas Gerais who inherits a fortune, a dog, and a strange philosophy from a dying friend.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A dying philosopher teaches Humanitas
The story opens in Botafogo, where Rubião stands at a window and counts his luck. A year earlier he was a poor teacher. Now he owns a house, a garden, a view of the bay and a silver tray he adores. Then the narrator takes us back a few months to Barbacena, in Minas Gerais, and to the sickbed of Quincas Borba.
Quincas Borba is the same eccentric who appeared in The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas, a beggar turned heir and inventor of a philosophy. In Barbacena he is dying slowly. Rubião closes his boys' school to nurse him for nearly six months, and his care is real. A dog with a lead-colored coat shares the sick man's bed, and the philosopher has given it his own name.
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What is Quincas Borba about?
It tells of Rubião, a kind teacher who inherits a fortune and a dog from the philosopher Quincas Borba, moves to Rio de Janeiro, and is drawn into love, politics and spending as people around him take advantage of his wealth.
What is Humanitas in Quincas Borba?
Humanitas is the philosophy invented by the dying Quincas Borba. It claims that one universal principle lives in all things, that individuals are like bubbles in boiling water, and that conflict is useful because the winner survives.
Do I need to read The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas first?
No. The philosopher Quincas Borba first appears in that earlier novel, and the narrator mentions it, but this book tells its own complete story about Rubião, so you can start here and follow everything.
The author
Machado de Assis
1839–1908 · Brazilian novelist and poet
Machado de Assis was a Brazilian writer born in Rio de Janeiro in 1839. He lived there until his death in 1908. He wrote novels, short stories, poetry, and plays. His novels include Helena (1876), The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881), Quincas Borba (1891), and Dom Casmurro (1899).
More by Machado de Assis
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