Vastlands: The Crossing: A Novel by João Guimarães Rosa, Alison Entrekin (Hardcover) (PREORDER)

Fiction - Literary - World Literature - Brazil - Classics

RELEASE DATE: 1/19/2027 (WILL SHIP DIRECTLY FROM OUR SUPPLIER'S WAREHOUSE)

Translated from the Portuguese by: Alison Entrekin

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

One of Latin America’s greatest works of literature and an epic story of honor and revenge set in Brazil’s high inland plateaus—now 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. 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.

AUTHOR BIO: 

João Guimarães Rosa, born in 1908 in Cordisburgo, Brazil, was a novelist and short story writer whose innovative prose style, derived from the oral tradition of the sertão (the vast hinterlands or backlands of Brazil), revitalized Brazilian fiction in the mid-20th century. His portrayal of the conflicts of the Brazilian backlanders in his native state of Minas Gerais reflects the problems of an isolated rural society adjusting to a modern urban world. His epic novel, Grande Sertão: Veredas, which grew out of Corpo de Baile and was published in 1956, firmly established his international reputation. Turning exclusively to the short story, Guimarães Rosa published several more collections before his death, notably Primeiras Estórias in 1962. He died of a heart attack in Rio de Janeiro in 1967 and is today celebrated as one of the greatest Brazilian writers who ever lived.

TRANSLATOR BIO: 

Alison Entrekin is a translator from the Portuguese. She has translated many of Brazil's beloved and iconic novels, including Clarice Lispector's debut novel, Near to the Wild Heart, the favela classic, City of God by Paulo Lins, Chico Buarque's Budapest, and Daniel Galera's Blood Drenched Beard. Her work has received the New South Wales Premier's Translation Prize, the Australasian Association of Writing Programs/Ubud Writers & Readers Festival (AAWP/UWRF) Translators' Prize, and has been a finalist for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the PEN America Translation Prize, the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and the Stephen Spender Poetry Prize. In 2026, she was appointed an Office of the Order of Rio Branco (Brazil) for her services to literature. She divides her time between Australia and Brazil.

Review Quotes:
"Fans of all things Quixotic, welcome to your new favorite novel. A Brazilian jagunço's coming-of-age just as the jagunço age is ending; a fighters' friendship powered by an unnameable erotic connection; a deal with the devil that might be a pact with the land itself, all this, "...the sertão of the world...," comes at you in a rollicking, reflective late-life confession. Guimarães Rosa tooled his tale in a bespoke Portuguese, packed with neologisms and deeply referential. Now, Alison Entrekin has done what few translators would even dream of, retooling it with stunning erudition, agility and assurance. One of Brazil's most influential books since its publication 70 years ago, Entrekin's version reads like it was written for us, today."--Padma Viswanathan

"I don't know how far his inventive power goes, it surpasses every imaginable limit."--Clarice Lispector