''The Mandarin'' (

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

: ''O Mandarim'') is a novella on the sin of avarice by

José Maria de Eça de Queirós José is a predominantly Spanish and Portuguese form of the given name Joseph. While spelled alike, this name is pronounced differently in each language: Spanish ; Portuguese (or ). In French, the name ''José'', pronounced , is an old vernacul ...

(1845 - 1900), also known as Eça de Queiroz. It was first published in Portuguese in 1880. The first English version, translated by

Richard Franko Goldman Richard Franko Goldman (December 7, 1910 – January 19, 1980) was a conductor, educator, author, music critic, and composer. Born Richard Henry Maibrunn Goldman (Maibrunn being his mother's family name), he adopted the same middle name as ...

, was published by

The Bodley Head The Bodley Head is an English publishing house, founded in 1887 and existing as an independent entity until the 1970s. The name was used as an imprint of Random House Children's Books from 1987 to 2008. In April 2008, it was revived as an adul ...

in 1965. A translation by

Margaret Jull Costa Margaret Elisabeth Jull Costa OBE, OIH (born 2 May 1949) is a British translator of Portuguese- and Spanish-language fiction and poetry, including the works of Nobel Prize winner José Saramago, Eça de Queiroz, Fernando Pessoa, Paulo Coelho, B ...

, was published by

Dedalus Books Dedalus Books is a British publishing company specialising in European literature. As stated on their website, Dedalus specialises in "its own distinctive genre, which we term distorted reality, where the bizarre, the unusual and the grotesque ...

in 1993. A revised version was published by Dedalus in 2009, together with three short stories.

Background

The story was serialized in a shorter version in the ''Diário de Portugal'' and, with the addition of six chapters, it was sold as a book in 1881. It was initially attacked as being a departure from the realist style used by Eça in his earlier works. He was also accused of plagiarising the idea from a story by

Alphonse Daudet Alphonse Daudet (; 13 May 184016 December 1897) was a French novelist. He was the husband of Julia Daudet and father of Edmée, Léon and Lucien Daudet. Early life Daudet was born in Nîmes, France. His family, on both sides, belonged to the ...

, although ''The Mandarin'' was accepted for serialization in the French ''Revue Universelle Internationale'' in 1884.

The Plot

Teodoro, a poor Portuguese civil servant in Lisbon, receives a visit from the Devil in disguise who offers him the chance of inheriting unlimited riches if he rings a bell placed on a book by his side, which will lead to the death of a rich Mandarin, Ti Chin-fu, in distant China. This Teodoro duly does, resulting in his inheriting the Mandarin's fortune and starting to spend enormous sums. However, he finds that fabulous wealth brings with it unexpected problems. In time, remorse sends him to China to look for the dead Mandarin’s family. Failing to find them, he returns to Lisbon still haunted by the crime. His attempts to renounce the inheritance come to nothing. Sensing that he is dying he bequeaths his millions to the Devil, with the observation that “The only bread that tastes good is the bread we earn day by day with our own hands: never kill the Mandarin”.

Reviews

Keates describes the novella as a "brilliant mischievous essay in fantasy

chinoiserie (, ; loanword from French '' chinoiserie'', from '' chinois'', "Chinese"; ) is the European interpretation and imitation of Chinese and other East Asian artistic traditions, especially in the decorative arts, garden design, architecture, lite ...

, irreverently subverting the trope, created half a century earlier by Balzac in ''

La Peau de chagrin ''La Peau de chagrin'' (, ''The Skin of Shagreen''), known in English as ''The Magic Skin and The Wild Ass's Skin'', is an 1831 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). Set in early 19th-century Paris, it tells t ...

'', of the Oriental curse masquerading as a blessing". Another reviewer considers that the choice made by Teodoro was a “reworking of the ‘ Mandarin paradox’ first posed by French writer Chateaubriand in 1802”. Sobre notes the way Eça uses allegory to make criticism of society and the human condition, observing that the novel provides interesting observations on the relationship between people’s possessions and the way others treat them, as well as on the morality of humans.

Adaptations

The book was adapted as a Portuguese TV miniseries in 1991.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mandarin, The Novels by José Maria de Eça de Queiroz 1880 novels Novels set in Portugal 19th-century Portuguese novels