Vastlands: The Crossing

For the first time in over sixty years, one of Latin America’s greatest works of literature returns in a mesmerizing new translation by Alison Entrekin, featuring an introduction by Colm Tóibín. First published in Brazil in 1956 and long hailed as one of the greatest works of world literature, Vastlands: The Crossing is João Guimarães Rosa’s monumental novel of the sertão—the vast backlands where bandits, mercenaries, and mystics shape their own codes of honor and survival. In this sweeping saga, Riobaldo, a reformed jagunço—bodyguard or hired gun—and retired rancher, recounts his life of violence, loyalty, and longing, from his early initiation into the lawless jagunço bands to his rise as a leader and his obsessive devotion to the enigmatic Diadorim, the comrade-in-arms who will forever change the course of his life. At once an epic of battle on the plateaus and a profoundly tender love story, Vastlands follows Riobaldo across a landscape both physical and metaphysical, where questions of fate, morality, and the existence of evil are inseparable from the terrain itself.