Jorge Luis Borges considered Eça de Queiroz "one of the greatest writers of all time": The Maias, published in 1888, is undoubtedly his masterpiece.

It belongs to the genre of "cyclical" novels, which follow the fate of not only one person, but also of a family, thus preceding Thomas's Buddenbrooks.

The crux of the action is a sulphurous love story in the romantic style, but the great interest of the story lies elsewhere: in the depiction of a decadent bourgeois society; in the evocation of the city of Lisbon that the hero, Carlos de Maia, explores, from the street of the "Janelas Verdes" to Chiado; finally in the character of Ega, a typical cultured, hyper-conscious, cosmopolitan Portuguese, inclined to denigrate his country to which he is deeply attached – like Eça himself.

At once the story of a fatal passion, an objective portrayal of morals and a virulent satire, this book, whose rhythm recalls English novels in its style that is at once luminous, tender and ironic, has immortalized Lisbon in literature.