This article deals with two novels by Lima Barreto:Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha andVida e morte de M.J. Gonzaga de Sá, with an emphasis on the latter. The former can be read as a novel of arrivism, or as a neo-picaresque novel, or as a mosaic of fragments of chronicles, or yet almost as a diary. The latter, a fictional biography of a certain Gonzaga de Sá, serves its author as a means to discuss "abstract" issues, with aesthetic and ethical implications. Considered by several critics the most Machadian of Lima Barreto's novels, it is haunted by Machado de Assis's shadow, which hovers over both narrator and writer. The name of the character-narrator, Augusto Machado, would be not exactly an homage, but a kind of tribute to the author ofMemórias póstumas de Brás Cubas.
Lima Barreto; novel; history; Vida e morte de M.J. Gonzaga de Sá