7 h 50 minAudiobook7 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 every machine meant to make life easier only makes happiness harder to find?
Jacinto has money, learning, and a Paris house packed with inventions. He trusts them all to bring him happiness. His friend Zé Fernandes, a good-humored country gentleman, tells his story with affection and gentle irony. But lifts stall, plumbing fails, and the comforts of a grand household begin to look less like answers and more like trouble.
Then Jacinto’s family estate at Tormes, in Portugal’s Douro mountains, needs attention. The quiet countryside stands against the glitter and restless habits of Paris. In The City and the Mountains, Eça de Queirós tests what progress promises and what people truly need. His satire neither simply rejects the city nor simply praises life among the mountains.
What you’ll discover
- A house of marvels Explore a grand Paris home where ingenious comforts become sources of comic disaster.
- A friend’s gentle irony See Jacinto through Zé Fernandes, whose affection gives the satire its human warmth.
- The promise of progress Question whether machines, money, and learning can give a restless mind what it needs.
- City against mountains Discover the contrast between Parisian glitter and the quiet landscape of the Portuguese countryside.
- Happiness beyond comfort Follow a wealthy heir whose faith in science and comfort meets a gentle test.
Who will love it
For readers who love warm, funny fiction with a sharp eye for fashion and progress, and anyone drawn to the contrast between city noise and the quiet of the Portuguese countryside.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A rich young man with a theory
- A house built on machines
- When the machines begin to fail
- The call of Tormes and the mountains
- What the book says about progress and nature
- A friend's voice and a gentle irony
Who’s who
- JacintoA rich Portuguese heir raised in Paris, who trusts science and comfort to bring happiness and slowly grows weary of both.
- Zé FernandesA good-humored country gentleman from the Portuguese north, Jacinto's loyal friend, who tells the tale and loves both his friend and his land.
- GriloJacinto's Portuguese servant in Paris, who helps manage the great household of machines and routines.
- JoaninhaZé Fernandes's cousin, a country girl whose simple good sense stands in quiet contrast to the city's fashions.
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The City and the Mountains
by Eça de Queirós · 1901
In a Paris house full of machines, Jacinto stakes his happiness on science, learning and wealth.
Medium level5–10 hours to read25 languages
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In short
The City and the Mountains is a short Portuguese novel by Eça de Queirós. It grew out of an earlier tale he had written and reworked, and it was published in 1901, after his death in 1900.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A rich young man with a theory
Zé Fernandes first meets Jacinto as a student in Paris. Jacinto was born there to a wealthy Portuguese family whose fortune comes from farms in the Douro region. He has never lived in Portugal. He is clever, polite and rich, and he lives in a grand house at number 202 on the Champs-Élysées.
Jacinto has a theory about happiness, and he states it like a law of science. A man is happier the more he knows and the more he can do. So the wise and powerful man must be the happiest of all. For Jacinto, civilization is the tool that gives a person both knowledge and power, and the city is where civilization lives.
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What is The City and the Mountains about?
It tells of Jacinto, a wealthy Portuguese man raised in Paris who believes that science and comfort bring happiness. His friend Zé Fernandes watches him grow bored, then brings him to the mountains of Portugal, where his ideas are tested.
Who is Zé Fernandes in The City and the Mountains?
Zé Fernandes is the narrator and Jacinto's friend. He is a Portuguese country gentleman who lives simply, speaks plainly, and observes his friend's life in Paris and later in the mountains with warmth and humor.
When was The City and the Mountains written and published?
Eça de Queirós worked on it near the end of his life and left it unfinished at his death in 1900. It was published in 1901. It grew from an earlier short tale he had written.
The author
Eça de Queirós
1845–1900 · Portuguese novelist
Eça de Queirós was a Portuguese writer and diplomat, born in Póvoa de Varzim in 1845. He wrote The Crime of Father Amaro (1875), Cousin Bazilio (1878), and The Maias (1888). His diplomatic work took him to Cuba, Britain, and France. He died in Paris in 1900.
More by Eça de Queirós
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