This is the final novel of one of the most innovative, comic Brazilian writers of this century. It takes the form of an anonymous high school science teacher's journal about an unpublished novel written by his deceased lover, a young woman named Julia Marquezim Enone. Her novel's central character, Maria da Franca, is a destitute and mentally unstable woman at odds with the Brazilian social welfare system, from which she is trying to claim benefits for time spent in a psychiatric hospital. The journal represents the science teacher's attempt to understand Julia's novel and, in the process, Julia herself and the relationship they once shared.Rather than providing him with comfort and a better understanding of his beloved, the teacher's explorations create an ever-widening circle of questions and fears about himself, her, and finally any attempt to understand anything about anyone. But the narrator's failures become the reader's comic delights. Reminiscent of Flann O'Brien, Manuel Puig, and Laurence Sterne, with this novel Osman Lins takes his rightful place among the major figures of twentieth-century fiction. "One of the most majestic prose stylists Latin America has ever produced." (Washington Post) "We marvel as Lins explores the possibilities of the modern novel." (News from Brazil 3-96) "Lins's last work is agreeably crammed with life and color, and thus constitutes a hybrid every bit as intriguing as the interior story within the novel within the journal that appears to be its subject." (Kirkus Reviews 10-15-95) "The Queen of the Prisons of Greece is sublime; a must-read for serious writers and readers alike. . . . Ultimately signifying that the concepts of truth and understanding are the cruelest of lies, The Queen of the Prisons of Greece proves Lins to be an author worthy of the canonization he deserves—if only for his ability to challenge and stimulate the mind." (Publishers Weekly 10-30-95) "Captivating. .