Book Review: ‘Dom Casmurro,’ by Machado de Assis

Article excerpt

Machado de Assis's "Dom Casmurro" demands active, vigilant reading. The 19th-century Brazilian novel weaves a narrator's account of love, betrayal, and memory with deliberate ambiguities that force readers to question what they're being told. The book's power lies in its refusal to settle questions, is the narrator reliable? did the central betrayal actually occur?, inviting readers to excavate meaning through careful rereading. This masterwork of narrative unreliability remains vital precisely because it teaches us to read with skepticism and precision.