The Misplaced Machine & Other Stories by José J. Veiga [U.S. FIRST EDITION] 1970 • Knopf

The Misplaced Machine & Other Stories by José J. Veiga

U.S. FIRST EDITION • FIRST PRINTING [1970] ALFRED A. KNOPF

Hardcover with dust jacket in excellent condition.

One small surface tear to top of spine on an overall stunning and vibrant dust jacket; now housed in a new archival quality jacket protector. 

Book itself is near mint; pristine cloth boards.  Reads as new. 

The first appearance in English of the work of one of Brazil’s leading writers of fiction, the narratives that make up The Misplaced Machine and Other Stories combine the element of terror with refining touches of tenderness, lightness, and lyricism. Some are poignant, some macabre, some ironically funny, but all imaginatively interweave mystery and fantasy with reality. 

A peddler enters a town where a wolf is being tortured, is inexplicably coerced to stay the night, and dies in the squalid stable of his captor.

An Indian boy, taken to live with a white family, is abused and made the village slave; he is jailed for a trivial incident, forgotten, and then shot one holiday as he walks out of the open jail door.

A widowed father parts with his son.

A rich schoolboy’s affair with a soldier’s mistress is comically thwarted.

Two children speculate on their appearance in the eyes of a huge creature.

A small boy’s fantasy about the beasts of the forest is contrasted with harsh reality.

A painstakingly built highway is abandoned because of an unkillable rooster who leads to their death all who travel it.

An old dog is jealous of a puppy - he eats it - but is haunted forever after.

A strange machine is delivered by mistake to the center of a small town; no one knows what it is or how it works, but its very mystery makes it an object of worship.

A small boy ponders the meaning of death as it occurs on the farm. 

Everywhere in these sensitive tales an ingenious storyteller comments on some of the enduring agonies of the human condition: jealousy, fear, death, brutality, and the haunted mind.