The Devil to Pay in the Backlands
An old rancher talks for three days to a silent educated visitor, going back over his years riding with bandit gangs across the Minas Gerais backlands, the murder of the chief he served, the war of reprisal that followed, and the young fighter Diadorim, whom he loved and could never account for. What he wants settled is whether the devil exists, because one night at a crossroads he believes he offered himself to something that did not come. The whole book is a single unbroken monologue in a language Rosa part-collected and part-invented, and it is generally taken as the central Brazilian novel of the century.
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Attributes
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
Plot structure
Symbol / motif
Conflict
Culture / tradition
Closest analogues
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- 33% · 10 shared