ESAU & JACOB by Machado de Assis. 287 pages. University of California. $5.
The aging tycoons were enjoying the fruits of their conquests in the world of finance and politics. Their sons and daughters were whirling at fashionable balls, attending the opera and negotiating advantageous marriages. Along the gaslit avenues, streetcars were beginning to compete with horse-drawn landaus. Sounds like some place in fin-de-siècle Europe? Actually it is Rio de Janeiro during the last quarter of the 19th century, as affectionately remembered by Brazil's extraordinary novelist, Machado de Assis, who died in 1908....
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