Vastlands: The Crossing

Vastlands: The Crossing is a beguiling work of great literary beauty and metaphysical power – in Alison Entrekin’s wonderwork of translation, an indisputable classic of world literature has finally found its true form in English -- PAUL LYNCH, Booker Prize-winning author of Prophet Song
One of Brazil’s greatest novelists * New York Times *
Brazil’s Ulysses finally gets the translation it deserves -- RICHARD FLANAGAN, Booker Prize- and Baillie Gifford Prize-winning author
A veritable linguistic tour de force. One of the most formally accomplished works of the century -- MARIO VARGAS LLOSA, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature
A great translator, like any great writer, can remake the possibilities of writing. Vastlands is the work of a great translator – and one who in this book has handled the language like a living thing. It’s a dazzling, ambitious, high-voltage work – wild, sensuous, chaotic and intense. And I’m afraid it will probably ruin you for whatever you read next. But, oh, it’s worth it… -- DANIEL HAHN, multi-award-winning translator and author of If This Be Magic
A literary work of rare dimension . . . One of the greatest books ever written. Brutal, tender, hearty, wild, vast just like Brazil itself -- JORGE AMADO, author of Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands
One of the great novels of the last century. With its complex vision of life and fate, with its garrulous and wily narrator, it exudes a vast and engrossing narrative energy -- COLM TÓIBÍN, author of Brooklyn
The most audacious and well-realised experimental novels to come out of twentieth-century Brazil -- CAETANO W. GALINDO
A magnificent achievement -- Alexander Coleman * New York Times *
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
All the audacity of the construction, all the richness of the philosophical content would be mere games of intelligence if Guimarães Rosa’s sertão were not also, besides a symbol, a living and concrete reality, with its animals, plants, people, and superstitions admirably described -- PAULO RÓNAI
An extraordinary masterpiece . . . Within it everything is strong, beautiful, impeccably realised -- ANTONIO CANDIDO, winner of the Alfonso Reyes International Prize
As an account of guerrilla warfare, wilderness journeys, assorted atrocities, lust, hate, vengeance and killing, it is dramatic, wildly colourful and continuously interesting -- Orville Prescott * New York Times *
He has given Portuguese a new flexibility, which enables him to find effective literary expression for insights and experiences beyond the reach of conventional prose -- William L. Grossman * New York Times *
A pure delight -- MÚCIO LEÃO, former president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
Guimarães Rosa is a renevator of language -- JOSUÉ MONTELLO, former president of the Brazilian Academy of Letters
A recognised masterpiece of Brazilian literature and a classic of twentieth-century fiction -- LUCIANA STEGAGNO PICCHIO