Margaret Jull Costa's translation of The City and the Mountains was runner-up in the 2009 Portuguese Translation Prize. In this very funny late novel, published after his death, Eça's satire is turned on the emptiness of city life and of modernity itself, and the bucolic second half, which bubbles with joie-de-vivre, reflects Eça's own recently discovered joy in country living at his wife's estate in Tormes. The City and the Mountains will appeal to readers of classic nineteenth-century fiction.
