The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
João Guimarães Rosa · 1908–1967 · Brazil
Originally Grande Sertão: Veredas (Portuguese) · translated by James L. Taylor and Harriet de Onís
Why it matters
A retired gunman pours out, in one breathless monologue, his war across the Brazilian sertão and a possible pact with the devil. Guimarães Rosa invents a whole language: a linguistic universe unto itself.
At a glance
epicmagical realism
Difficulty 9/10slow pace494 pagesInvented vocabulary and a single unbroken monologue push Portuguese syntax to its limits.
Deep dive
How a single unbroken monologue can spend hundreds of pages circling two questions its own narrator is constitutionally unable to answer.
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