The Bankruptcy: A Novel by Jlia Lopes de Almeida

Set in the early years of Brazil's Old Republic after the abolition of slavery, Jlia Lopes de Almeida's The Bankruptcy depicts the rise and fall of a wealthy coffee exporter against a kaleidoscopic background of glamour, poverty, seduction, and financial speculation. The novel introduces readers to a turbulent period in Brazilian history seething with new ideas about democracy, women's emancipation, and the role of religion in society. Originally published in 1901, its prescient critiques of financial capitalism and the patriarchal family remain relevant today.

In her lifetime, Jlia Lopes de Almeida was compared to Machado de Assis, the most important Brazilian writer of the nineteenth century. She was also considered for the inaugural list of members of the Brazilian Academy of Letters but was excluded because of her gender. In the decades after her death, her work was largely forgotten. This publication, a winner of the English PEN award, includes an introduction to the novel and a translators' preface and accompanies a general rediscovery of her extraordinary body of work in Brazil.