THE TRAGEDY OF THE STREET OF FLOWERS

A previously unpublished novel, not quite completed before the death of the great Portuguese realist (1845–1900), that appeared in Portugal in 1980, over the objections of Eça’s heirs. It reads like a finished book similar in scope and narrative authority to such Balzacian marvels as The Crime of Father Amaro and The Maias. The depiction of Lisbon hoi polloi aping the manners of Parisian sophisticates stings bracingly, but the central plot—an incestuous love affair seeded with doom for all involved and in its wake—obviously explains the novel’s undeserved notoriety. A significant addition to a magnificent—and still inexplicably underrated—body of work.