The narrator of Machado de Assis's 'The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas' is Brás Cubas. He tells his life story from beyond the grave, making the novel an unusual first-person memoir narrated by a dead man.
Published in 1881, the Portuguese-language novel follows Brás Cubas's childhood, education, failed ambitions, romances, and privileged life in nineteenth-century Rio de Janeiro. He begins with his funeral and death from pneumonia before jumping backward through his biography.
His position outside ordinary life gives him freedom to criticize Brazilian society, class privilege, slavery, politics, and his own selfishness without fearing earthly consequences. The narrator is deliberately unreliable, witty, vain, and frequently playful with the reader.
A common mix-up is confusing Brás Cubas with Quincas Borba, another important character who later gives his name to one of Machado's novels. The book is also known in English as 'Epitaph of a Small Winner,' a title associated with an earlier translation.