João Guimarães Rosa

João Guimarães Rosa (27 June 1908 - 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, probably the greatest Brazilian novelist born in the 20th century. His best-known work is the novel Grande Sertão: Veredas (translated as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands). Some people consider this to be the Brazilian equivalent of Ulysses.

Biography
Guimarães Rosa was born in Cordisburgo in the state of Minas Gerais, the first of six children of Florduardo Pinto Rosa (nicknamed "seu Fulô") and D. Francisca Guimarães Rosa ("Chiquitinha").

He was self-taught in many areas and from childhood studied many languages, starting with French before he was seven years old, as can be seen in an interview he gave a cousin of his later in life:

I speak: Portuguese, German, French, English, Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, some Russian; I read: Swedish, Dutch, Latin and Greek (but with the dictionary right next to me); I understand some German dialects; I studied the grammar of: Hungarian, Arabic, Sanskrit, Lithuanian, Polish, Tupi, Hebrew, Japanese, Czech, Finnish, Danish; I dabbled in others. But all at a very basic level. And I think that studying the spirit and the mechanism of other languages helps a great deal in the deeper understanding of the national language [of Brazil]. In general, however, I studied for pleasure, desire, distraction.

Still a child, he moved to his grandparents' house in Belo Horizonte, where he finished primary school. He began his secondary schooling at the Santo Antônio College in São João del Rei, but soon returned to Belo Horizonte, where he graduated. In 1925, at only 16, he applied for what was then called the College of Medicine of Minas Gerais University.

On June 27, 1930, he married Lígia Cabral Penna, a girl of only 16, with whom he had two daughters, Vilma and Agnes. In that same year he graduated and began his medical practice in Itaguara, then in the municipality of Itauna, in Minas Gerais, where he stayed about two years. It is in this town that he had his first contact with elements from the sertão (semi-arid Brazilian outback), which would serve as reference and inspiration in many of his works.

Back in Itaguara, Guimarães Rosa served as a volunteer doctor of the Public Force (Força Pública) in the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1932, heading to the so-called Tunel sector in Passa-Quatro, Minas Gerais, where he came into contact with the future president Juscelino Kubitschek, at that time the chief doctor of the Blood Hospital. Later he became a civil servant through examination. In 1933, he went to Barbacena in the position of Doctor of the 9th Armed Battalion (Oficial Médico do 9º Batalhão de Infantaria). Most of his life was spent as a Brazilian diplomat in Europe and Latin America.

In 1963, he was chosen by unanimous vote to enter the Academia Brasileira de Letras (Brazilian Academy of Letters) in his second candidacy. After postponing for 4 years, he finally assumed his position only in 1967: just three days before mysteriously passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro from a supposedly heart attack. His death was previously announced in his master piece, The Devil to pay in the backlands. In this novel, Riobard, a poet, makes a deal with Lucipher (the one who brings the light, LUX+FERO) in order to eliminate Hermogenes from the Sertão (a metaphor for Literature). The price to pay in the backlands is, as in every other faustian pact, the soul.

Guimaraes Rosa died at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career. He was only 59. The mystery of his death and his luciphered works will never be deciphered.

Selected bibliography

 * Caçador de camurças, Chronos Kai Anagke, O mistério de Highmore Hall e Makiné (1929)
 * Magma (1936)
 * Sagarana (Sagarana, 1946)
 * Com o Vaqueiro Mariano (With the cowboy Mariano, 1947)
 * Corpo de Baile (1956)
 * Grande Sertão: Veredas (1956)
 * Primeiras Estórias (First Stories, 1962, made into a movie called A Terceira Margem do Rio)
 * Tutaméia ? Terceiras Estórias (1967)
 * Em Memória de João Guimarães Rosa (1968, posthumous)
 * Estas Estórias e Ave, Palavra (1969/1970, posthumous)
 * Buriti (short story in "Corpo de Baile")