The Yellow Sofa

Jose Maria de Eca de Queiros, the first great modern Portuguese novelist, wrote iThe Yellow Sofa/i with, as he said, "no digressions, no rhetoric," where "everything is interesting and dramatic and quickly narrated." The story, a terse and seamless spoof of Victorian bourgeois morals, concerns Godofredo Alves, a successful, buoyant businessman who returns home to find his wife "on the yellow damask sofa...leaning in abandon on the shoulder of a man..." The man is none other than Machado, his best friend and business partner. Godofredo struggles with the public need to defend his honor, and a stronger inner desire for forgiveness and domestic tranquility.