[3] The narrative focuses on the beautiful Joaquina (later known as Genoveva) who leaves her husband and child in Portugal and flees with a Spaniard to Spain, where she becomes a courtesan, eventually marrying a French Senator and moving to Paris.

She becomes a paid mistress of the unattractive, but rich, Dâmaso while, at the same time, falling in love with a young man called Vítor da Silva.

While considered a fairly unpolished work that may not have been regarded by the author as his final version, the reviews have noted the high quality of the English translation.

The influence of the founder of literary realism, Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850), author of novels that depict Parisian society, can be detected.

Particularly amusing is Camilo, “a pretentious artist, full of talk but little action, who goes on and on about art history and styles and technique, but never paints anything.” [4] Eça “brilliantly dissects a world in which only surface counts, providing the reader with a vivid and gripping portrayal of a society and class consumed by hypocrisy, greed and materialism.”[2] Several writers have explored the role of incest in Eça’s works.