The Relic

Reviews / Votes

Aubrey Bell has put Eca de Queiros's Portuguese into English so wisely and so seamlessly that as we read along in the adoptive tongue we not only hear Eca's voice coming through, but at times can sense the glint of his monocle. The Relic is here preserved with all its subtle wit and wisdom in a masterful rendition." - Gregory Rabassa

"The Relic is the most incongruent, most extravagant, most inconceivable pandemonium that can be imagined. From farce to epic; from uproarious laughter to the most authentic pathos; from the picaresque adventure to the most sublime episodes; from the sophomoric joke to the most nobly serene painting of classical antiquity; from the most outrageous mockery to austere history; from the grotesque to the monumental; from blasphemy to hymn, this book has it all." - J. P. de Oliveira Martins, historian and contemporary of Eca

"Within a few pages he has us straining to keep with the modernity of his thought, we are instantly impressed by the purity and imagery of his style, respectful before his restraint and economy of word and incident, above all, fascinated by the rapier-like thrust of his satire. And-yes-convulsed by his hilarious comedy." - New York Times Book Review

"The Relic is a work of absolute comic genius, an invention provocative of outrageous laughter." - Harold Bloom