Anguish

Graciliano Ramos (1892-1953) was one of the greatest Brazilian writers of the 20th century. He was translated into several languages and published in several countries. His work inspired plays, radio soap operas and films, such as Vidas Secas, an adaptation of his most famous novel, which was brought to the screen in 1963 and won the Genoa Film Festival prize and the jury prize at the Cannes Film Festival. He worked as a translator, journalist and politician, as well as a writer, having been imprisoned, without charge or trial, for eleven months during the dictatorial Estado Novo government of Getúlio Vargas. Anguish, one of his best works and the book we are presenting here, was published in 1936, during the period in which he was imprisoned. The protagonist and narrator of Anguish is Luís da Silva, a thirty-five-year-old civil servant, the last descendant of a ruined rural oligarchy. He spends his days in a mediocre and unemotional way, until he falls in love with his neighbor, Marina, and even asks her to marry him. Marina, however, leaves him and falls for the charms of his greatest rival, Julião Tavares, a wealthy and well-connected but shallow and pretentious man. Told in a non-linear first-person narrative, the book is a grand experiment in stream-of-consciousness, describing its protagonist's conflicts and grievances in dry, harsh, and vivid prose. Anguish was originally published in the United States by Alfred A. Knopf in 1946 and again in 1972, and has not been reprinted since. We are pleased to present this masterpiece by the Brazilian writer in a new translation by Rômulo Lachi.