Literary forms travel from core countries to the periphery of capitalism, where they are adopted under social conditions that differ from those in the countries of their origin. Besides being inevitable, the resulting maladjustments lead to new and original aesthetic problems, presenting to the reader the symptoms of the world's complexity. When properly worked through, these allow for the rise of world-class art, as in the case of the great Brazilian novels by Machado de Assis. First published in Portuguese in 1977 as Ao vencedor as batatas: Forma literaria e processo social nos iniacios do romance brasileiro and presented here in a new English-language translation, To the Victor, the Potatoes! is a major work of one of the most significant Marxist literary critics of our time.

How can Latin Americans understand their past? Do ideologies which have been imported from Europe necessarily distort their view, or is that to underrate the power and objectivity of the ideas themselves? These questions are at the heart of this selection of essays, spanning twenty years of critical work on history, culture and identity, by one of the foremost Latin American intellectuals of our time. Roberto Schwarz's writings have had a profound effect throughout Latin America. This is the first volume of those writings to appear in English. Taking its title from what has probably been Schwarz's most influential essay, Misplaced Ideas first examines the slave-owning Brazil of the nineteenth century, to show the persistent gap between liberal ideology based on the free market, and the reality of forced labour. The essays which follow range across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and across film and fiction, theatre and music. They include four pieces on the great novelist Machado de Assis, and a powerful essay on the sometimes bizarre ways Brazilian culture reacted to the imposition of military rule. Throughout, Schwarz continually demonstrates the wit and sharpness which make his writings both a challenge and a pleasure to read.

"A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism" is a translation (from the original Portuguese) of Roberto Schwarz's renowned study of the work of Brazilian novelist Machado de Assis (1839-1908). A leading Brazilian theorist and author of the highly influential notion of "misplaced ideas," Schwarz focuses his literary and cultural analysis on Machado's "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas," which was published in 1880. Writing in the Marxist tradition, Schwarz investigates in particular how social structure gets internalized as literary form, arguing that Machado's style replicates and reveals the deeply embedded class divisions of nineteenth-century Brazil.
Widely acknowledged as the most important novelist to have written in Latin America before 1940, Machado had a surprisingly modern style. Schwarz notes that the unprecedented wit, sarcasm, structural inventiveness, and mercurial changes of tone and subject matter found in "The Posthumous Memoirs of Bras Cubas" marked a crucial moment in the history of Latin American literature. He argues that Machado's vanguard narrative reflects the Brazilian owner class and its peculiar status in both national and international contexts, and shows why this novel's success was no accident. The author was able to confront some of the most prestigious ideologies of the nineteenth century with some uncomfortable truths, not the least of which was that slavery remained the basis of the Brazilian economy.
"A Master on the Periphery of Capitalism "will appeal to those with interests in Latin American literature, nineteenth century history, and Marxist literary theory.

Roberto Schwarz is the foremost literary critic of his generation in Brazil and the most important Marxist practitioner in the tradition of the Frankfurt School writing anywhere today. This collection confirms the international significance of Schwarz's critical achievement. Studies of Kafka and Brecht respectively open and close the volume, which includes incisive studies of contemporary poetry and fiction in Brazil. The centerpiece is the hitherto untranslated Two Girls, which brings together two strongly contrasting narratives of girls' lives-one a classic novel, the other an adolescent's diary-to substantiate the crucial concept of objective form. With key reflections on theory and method and an illuminating account of the general historical importance of his exemplary Brazilian novelist, Machado de Assis, Two Girls compellingly demonstrates the logic and significance of Schwarz's work for an English-language readership.