[In Brazil the regionalists] took over the literary scene in the twenties and thirties and have practically monopolized it ever since. Unlike the urban novel, a relatively minor form concentrated in two or three big cities … Brazilian regionalism comes from all parts of the country…. The genre has all the familiar inconveniences. Its emphasis has been, predictably, on the collective…. A far cry from this is Guimarães Rosa, to whom the word "regional" no longer applies as a synonym for limitation. He can cover broad spaces because there is plenty of room inside him. In him outer scope is inner range. His sertão is the soul of his country, as the Chekhovian steppes were the soul of Russia.

He is a mystic, part Catholic, part Taoist and Buddhist, with a religious sense of life, a fervent respect for all living things, and an unquenchable thirst for...