"In his posthumous memoirs, Braz Cubas, a wealthy nineteenth-century Brazilian, examines (from beyond the grave) his rather undistinguished life in 160 short chapters that both cover the basics of his existence and open out into philosophical explorations that sometimes follow meandering paths of thought to unexpected places, at times exuberant and hilarious, at other times cynical and utterly at odds with the world around him. In the tradition of Laurence Sterne and Jonathan Swift -- and as a clear forerunner of the works of Gabriel Garcia Marquez and Jorge Luis Borges -- Epitaph of a Small Winner, first published in 1880, is one of the wittiest self-portraits in literary history, as well as quite possibly the greatest novel you have never heard of"--P. [4] of cover.