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 and presented here in a new English-language translation, is a major work of one of the most significant Marxist literary critics of our time.