Vastlands: The Crossing
Will be published approx. on 19. January 2027
704 pages
E-Book
978-1-0372-0193-6 (ISBN)
Description
WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY COLM TÓIBÍN
'Dramatic, wildly colourful and continuously interesting' NEW YORK TIMES
'A veritable linguistic tour de force' MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
In 1956, Brazilian author João Guimarães Rosa published what would become his magnum opus, Grande Sertao: Veredas. South American literary critics were astounded by this ground-breaking ode to the backlands of Brazil, declaring it the Brazilian Ulysses. Guimarães Rosa's astounding work would take the Latin American literary world by storm.
Originally translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands in 1963, Vastlands is a single sweeping retrospective monologue from the point of view of Riobaldo, a former jagunço - a mercenary or bandit - recounting his life in the backlands of inland Brazil. Raised in poverty by a single mother, Riobaldo receives a basic education before forging his own path within the deeply embedded machismo of the backlands, buoyed by his incredible military abilities and sheer tenacity. His story is a twisting narrative of fraught longing and the flux of power in a lawless state, of old feuds and new betrayals, exiles, Faustian pacts and precarious hierarchy.
Now, over sixty years since its only English translation and seventy years since its initial publication in Portuguese, multi-award-winning literary translator Alison Entrekin renders Guimarães Rosa's feat of linguistic engineering in kaleidoscopic prose, offering the key to this beloved yet often-overlooked masterpiece to a new generation of readers.
'Dramatic, wildly colourful and continuously interesting' NEW YORK TIMES
'A veritable linguistic tour de force' MARIO VARGAS LLOSA
In 1956, Brazilian author João Guimarães Rosa published what would become his magnum opus, Grande Sertao: Veredas. South American literary critics were astounded by this ground-breaking ode to the backlands of Brazil, declaring it the Brazilian Ulysses. Guimarães Rosa's astounding work would take the Latin American literary world by storm.
Originally translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands in 1963, Vastlands is a single sweeping retrospective monologue from the point of view of Riobaldo, a former jagunço - a mercenary or bandit - recounting his life in the backlands of inland Brazil. Raised in poverty by a single mother, Riobaldo receives a basic education before forging his own path within the deeply embedded machismo of the backlands, buoyed by his incredible military abilities and sheer tenacity. His story is a twisting narrative of fraught longing and the flux of power in a lawless state, of old feuds and new betrayals, exiles, Faustian pacts and precarious hierarchy.
Now, over sixty years since its only English translation and seventy years since its initial publication in Portuguese, multi-award-winning literary translator Alison Entrekin renders Guimarães Rosa's feat of linguistic engineering in kaleidoscopic prose, offering the key to this beloved yet often-overlooked masterpiece to a new generation of readers.
More details
Other editions
Additional editions
Joao Guimaraes Rosa
Vastlands: The Crossing
Book
approx. 01/2027
Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
€50.95
Not yet published
Persons
Alison Entrekin is an award-winning literary translator from Portuguese into English. She has translated many of Brazil's most beloved and iconic literary works. She has won the New South Wales Premier's Translation Prize and PEN medallion and the AAWP Translator's Prize. She has been an American Literary Translators Association Travel Fellow and a finalist in the PEN America Translation Prize, the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, among others. Entrekin speaks regularly on the topic of literary translation and has taught translation workshops around Brazil.
João Guimarães Rosa was a novelist and short-story writer whose innovative prose style, derived from the oral tradition of the sertão (hinterland of Brazil), revitalised Brazilian fiction in the mid-twentieth century.
João Guimarães Rosa was a novelist and short-story writer whose innovative prose style, derived from the oral tradition of the sertão (hinterland of Brazil), revitalised Brazilian fiction in the mid-twentieth century.
