Dom Casmurro, by Machado de Assis, came out in book form in 1899, published by Garnier, in Rio de Janeiro and Paris. It has 148 short chapters, each with a title, without division into parts, narrated in the first person by Bento Santiago, now old.
The novel belongs to Machado's mature phase, after The Posthumous Memoirs of Brás Cubas (1881) and Quincas Borba (1891). It recounts events that take place some forty years before publication, in the Rio of the Second Reign.
Those who have not yet read it may begin at the beginning and without skipping, because the first chapters set the rules of the game before there is any suspicion: the narrator explains the title, the copied house and the plan to write. Whoever begins with Escobar's wake reads the book that Bentinho wants them to read.