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It is an astonishing novel published in 1881 but not at all dated. The narrator, Bras Cubas, is dead and addresses the reader to recount his life, starting from the end. Death is omnipresent in this book, a disguised meditation on life, time passage, and human comedy. Machado goes beyond these subjects' romantic melancholy and seriousness through irony and humor. And above all, he demonstrates a jubilant formal inventiveness. The novel unrolls a more or less continuous thread strewn with unexpected digressions. It is a series of 160 short chapters, some of which are particularly astonishing:
. One consists only of ellipses.
. Another is a theatrical dialogue in which only the text is missing.
. Yet another is a continuation of notes without syntax.

Finally, a last is to insert in the previous one.