by Joao Guimaraes Rosa

Joao Guimaraes Rosa was born in 1908 in the rural interior of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where many of his works, including The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, are set. Although his intellectual and professional pursuits took him far from his rural beginnings, he never severed his ties to his home state, particularly to its central and northern cattle-raising regions. Rosa always considered himself to be at heart a cowboy and a man of the backlands, the Brazilian hinterland known in Portuguese as the sertão. He started his literary career in 1946, after pursuing by turns medical, military, and diplomatic careers, and participating briefly in a political rebellion. Through these experiences, he enriched his understanding of human nature and therefore his writing: “As a doctor I became acquainted with the...