Three months to live.

José Maria, a contemplative engineer in late middle age, and now a victim of leukemia, has received a death sentence from his doctor. His life has been a frustrating nonfulfillment of his early hopes, and his musings are many and varied as his life wanes.

The Brazilian writer Corção's remarkable novel is the diary of this thoughtful man facing the imminent prospect of death and trying to find the meaning of life—and of death—while evaluating his own existence.

Gustavo Corção was a journalist and wrote many works about Roman Catholicism.

• Translator’s Preface
• Part One: Kundry
  • The Announced Visitor
  • In Dr. Aquiles’ Consultation Room
  • “Iván Ilých Saw That He Was Dying and He Was in Continual Despair”
  • Old Deaths
  • Between Goethe and Voltaire
  • Am I Discovering, I Wonder, That the Soul Is Immortal?
  • The More They Demonstrate the Soul’s Immortality, the Less I Believe in It
  • Pedreira Is Finishing His Book
  • Life Is but a Walking Shadow
  • Catarina, Where Did You Put My Childhood?
  • The Encounter in the Campo de Santana
  • There Is a Luciana
  • On a Dream Adriatic
• Part Two: Burmese Rubies
  • My Roses
  • The General’s Roses
  • The World Reduced to Atoms
  • Comical Errors
  • Dead Jealousies
  • The Coffee-Bar Waitress Who Stands All Day, de marré deci
  • Merry Christmas!
  • My Volumes of Jules Verne
  • In the Blood
  • Gertrude’s Earrings
• Part Three: Journey to the Center of the Earth
  • Professor Leidenbrock’s Training
  • On the Inside of Things
  • The Broken Clock
  • The Duel with Sirius
  • The Universe à double face
  • Jandira’s Carnival
  • A Priest Went By
  • The Doctor’s Visit
  • Blood Wedding Anniversary
  • The Depths of Subjectivity
  • The Man Who Says Farewell
  • Rosa, Rosae
  • The End of the World