João Guimarães Rosa (1908-1967) Brazil

João Guimarães Rosa is the author of the epic masterpiece Grande sertão: veredas. Born in Cordisburgo, a rural town in the federal state of Minas, João Guimarães Rosa is undoubtedly the giant of Brazilian prose fiction in the twentieth century. After working as a doctor for two years, he entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and was named Vice-Consul in Hamburg, Germany, in 1938. From 1942 to 1944 he worked in Bogotá. After his return to Brazil he occupied various important official positions for his country. In 2008, Brazil and the world celebrated his one hundredth birthday.

Guimarães Rosa’s first collection of stories, Sagarana, published in 1946, had an explosive effect upon the Brazilian literary scene, which had comfortably adapted itself to fifteen years of regionalist fiction based on a pictorial reproduction of rural life. Guimarães Rosa was a polyglot and well-read in numerous foreign literatures. He was called the “James Joyce of the Portuguese language” because of his linguistic innovations, which included widespread lexical borrowings from ancient and modern languages, the creation of neologisms, syntactic inversions, a unique “telegraphic syntax”, and the consistent use of an orally based style of story-telling possessing medieval and archetypal qualities.

After the publication of Grande Sertão: Veredas, Guimarães Rosa returned to the genre of short fiction and published several collections of stories and novelettes, among others Corpo de baile (“Corps de Ballet”).

Guimarães Rosa received the most important literary awards of his country and has been translated into numerous languages.

Original editions:

Guimarães Rosa’s work is being published by Nova Fronteira in Rio de Janeiro.

Please ask for detailed information on the rights sold abroad.

Represented with exception of the work Grande sertão: veredas.

Novels:

Corpo de baile (1956) Includes:

● Manuelzão e Miguilim, 32nd ed. 2001, 260 p.

● No Urubuquaquá, no Pinhém, 9th ed. 2001, 314 p.

● Noites do sertão, 15th. 2000, 260 p.

Czech Republic: Torst 2010

Stories and short prose:

Sagarana (1946), 2001, 414 p. Includes:

● A hora e a vez de Augusto Matraga, 10.ed. 1996, 56 p.

Primeiras estórias (1962), 49th ed. 2001, 236 p.

Estas estórias (1969), 5th ed. 2001, 284 p. Includes:

● O meu tio Iauaretê

Tutaméia (1967), 8th ed. 2001, 268 p.

Ave, palavra (1970), 5th ed. 2001, 384 p.

(contos & crônicas)

Poetry:

Magma (1936), 1st ed. 1997, 148 p.

For children:

Fita verde no cabelo, 5th ed, 1992, 32 p.

O burrinho pedrês (1946), 1996, 104 p.

Correspondence with the author’s translators, published by Nova Fronteira:

(Italian) Bizzarri, Edoardo/Guimarães Rosa, 2003, 208 p.

(German) Meyer-Clason, Curt/ Bussolotti, Maria Aparecida Faria

Marcondes/ Guimarães Rosa, 2003, 448 p. (Prêmio Jabuti)