A jagunço is a horse-oriented primitive, somewhat like the cowboy in his style of life, unlike him in that his primary business is gang warfare rather than either range-riding or individual badmanship…. Activities of the jagunço take place in the sertão, or badlands, vast regions of north eastern Brazil which have about them something of the jungle, something of the desert, and something unearthly and indefinable but probably infernal….

Riobaldo, the hero of ["The Devil to Pay in the Backlands"] is a jagunço: he is such by choice, for he is well born and eventually enabled by his inheritance to leave his semi-outlaw status, but it is his career as a jagunço which he tells us about here. How, motivated first by a sense of adventure coupled with admiration for certain great leaders, later by desire for revenge when one of his chieftains...