Which Brazilian author wrote 'Grande Sertão: Veredas'?

João Guimarães Rosa wrote Grande Sertão: Veredas, the landmark Brazilian novel published in 1956.

The book follows Riobaldo, a former jagunço, or armed backlands fighter, who recounts his life and wartime experiences to an educated but largely silent listener. Set in Brazil’s interior sertão, the narrative explores loyalty, violence, love, memory, fate, and the uncertain existence of God and the Devil.

Rosa’s language is as important as the story. He reshaped Brazilian Portuguese with regional vocabulary, invented words, unusual syntax, philosophical reflection, and rhythms influenced by oral speech. The novel’s title refers to the sertão and its veredas—wetland paths or tracks associated with buriti palms. Its English title, The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, emphasizes one of the novel’s central spiritual concerns, but it was not Guimarães Rosa’s preferred translation.

A common mix-up is to assign the novel to Euclides da Cunha, whose Os Sertões is another foundational Brazilian work about the interior. Rosa’s book is a fictional, experimental monologue and was his only full-length novel.