The last of four novels that preceded Machado de Assis’s famous trilogy of realistic masterpieces, Iai Garcia belongs to what critics have called the Brazilian author’s “”romantic”” phase. But it is far more than that implies. Like his other early works, Iai Garcia foreshadows the themes and characters of Assis’s most masterful novels. Iai Garcia intertwines the lives of three characters in a subtly and wryly developing relationship. While the youthful Iai is growing into womanhood, a ten