The decline of a family and the decline of a nation are not always separate stories.

In The Maias, first published in Portuguese in 1888, Eça de Queiroz constructs an elaborate portrait of nineteenth-century Lisbon through the fortunes of an aristocratic family whose wealth, ambitions and romantic entanglements reveal the contradictions of a society caught between inherited privilege and the promise of modernity.

At its centre is Carlos da Maia, a wealthy young doctor whose education and progressive ideals prove rather less effective than his capacity for distraction. Around him circulates an extraordinary cast of politicians, intellectuals, social climbers and fashionable incompetents. Eça's realism is sharpened by his satirical attention to conversation, social performance and the peculiar vanity of a ruling class convinced of its own refinement.

Frequently compared with Balzac and Flaubert, The Maias combines domestic tragedy with a devastating comedy of national stagnation. Its central concern is not simply the failure of individuals, but the ways an entire social order learns to accommodate its own decline. Translated from Portuguese by Patricia McGowan Pinheiro and Ann Stevens, with an introduction by Helder Macedo.

J. M. Dent & Sons, London, 1986. First Everyman's Classics edition. Paperback. Illustrated wrappers with moderate surface rubbing, light creasing and edgewear. Pages show age-toning; internally appears clean and well preserved.