Vastlands: The Crossing

“A veritable linguistic tour de force.” —Mario Vargas Llosa

One of the greatest works of Latin American literature ever written and an epic story of honor and revenge set in Brazil’s high inland plateaus—now in a revelatory 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. His narration—restless, searching, and full of dazzling wordplay—circles the central mysteries of his life: his bond with Diadorim, the ever-looming specter of the devil, and the cost of power and vengeance.

Both a cornerstone of Brazilian literature and a rediscovered masterpiece for English-language readers, Vastlands: The Crossing stands alongside Ulysses and The Sound and the Fury as a daring reinvention of the novel and a singular, audacious journey into language, landscape, and the depths of human experience. In this new English language translation, the first to fully capture both the story and the linguistic brilliance of the original, Alison Entrekin recreates Guimarães Rosa’s achievement—preserving the novel’s music, strangeness, and vitality.