Guimarães Rosa

Writing

Biography

João Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 – 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian poet, diplomat, novelist, short story writer and doctor, considered by many to be the greatest Brazilian writer of the 20th century and one of the greatest of all time. Rosa only wrote one novel, Grande Sertão: Veredas (known in English as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands), a revolutionary text for its blend of archaic and colloquial prose and frequent use of neologisms, taking inspiration from the spoken language of the Brazilian backlands. For its profoundly philosophical themes, the critic Antonio Candido described the…