The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

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Cover for the Italian edition.

Grande Sertão: Veredas (English translation: The Devil to Pay in the Backlands) is an influential novel published in 1956 by the Brazilian writer João Guimarães Rosa. It is thought to be a riddle about popular superstitions. Most of the book's spirit is however lost in translation, as the portuguese original is written in a register that is both archaic and colloquial, using almost a grammar of its own, making it one of the most difficult books to translate (because quite a few translators will not even be able to read it). The combination of its size, linguistic oddness and polemic themes (like an homoerotic relationship) caused a shock when it was published, but now it is universally acclaimed and is considered one of the most important novels of South American literature.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Grande Sertão: Veredas is the complex story of Riobaldo, a former jagunço (mercenary or bandit) of the poor and steppe-like inland of the Rio São Francisco, known as Sertão, of the state of Minas Gerais. Now an old man and a rancher, Riobaldo tells his long story to an anonymous and silent listener coming from the city, resembling in some way Guimarães Rosa himself.

Riobaldo is born into a middle-class family and, unlike most of his contemporaries, receives an education. This enables him to begin his career as a tutor to a prominent local rancher, Ze Bebelo, and he watches as Ze Bebelo raises an army of his own jagunços to stamp out several of the local bandit gangs. Instead, for reasons that are never fully clear--apparently a desire for adventure--he disappears from the ranch and defects to the side of the bandits under the leadership of Joca Ramiro. Due to his excellent aim, Riobaldo becomes a valued member of the band and begins to rise in stature. In the course of the events Riobaldo gets acquainted with Reinaldo, whom he calls Diadorim, a young, pleasant and ambivalent fellow jagunço. The two starts a profound and subtly homoerotic friendship. Throughout the book it is hinted that Diadorim is Joca Ramiro's nephew or illegitimate son.

A facsimile of an original page of the book hanging in the Museum of the Portuguese Language.

Ramiro's men defeat and capture Ze Bebelo, but after a short trial, Bebelo is released. The war is temporarily over, but news later comes that two of Ramiro's lieutenants, Ricardao and Hermogenes, have betrayed and murdered him. As a result, the victorious army splits in two, Riobaldo staying with the current leader, Medeiro Vaz. When Vaz dies of illness, Ze Bebelo returns from exile and takes ownership of the band (this is actually where the book begins; the previous part is told in a very lengthy retrospective). They survive a lengthy siege by Hermogenes' men, but Ze Bebelo loses the taste for fighting, and the band is idled for nearly a month in a plague-ridden village. When this happens, Riobaldo mounts a challenge and takes command of the band, sending Ze Bebelo away.

Riobaldo, who has mused on the nature of the devil intermittently since the beginning of the book, tries to make a pact with the devil. He goes to a crossroads at midnight, but is uncertain as to whether the deal has been made or not, and he remains unsure for the rest of the story. He leads his band across a hostile desert and successfully ambushes and destroys Ricardao's men and kills Ricardao. He then moves against Hermogenes but is surprised; with difficulty and heavy casualties, his army defeats Hermogenes. The climax of the book is a knife-fight between the two opposing armies. In the fight, Diadorim kills Hermogenes, but is in turn killed.

When Diadorim's body is washed, Riobaldo discovers that Diadorim is in fact a woman, and the mystery of their love is cleared up. Riobaldo resigns command of the jagunços and settles down to a more conventional life.

The book is written in one long section, with no section or chapter breaks.