Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881–1922) was a Brazilian satirist and journalist, one of the most significant authors of the pre-modern period. The sad fate of Policarpo Cuaresma (1911) is his most famous literary work, describing from a critical point looking at the early years of the Old Republic in Brazil and revealing aspects of daily life in that historical era in the country's former capital, Rio de Janeiro.