In
The Land
, Antônio Torres tells a universal story of tragic homecoming in a style that owes much to the popular cultural forms of his birthplace in Brazil's notoriously poor Backlands (
Sertão
).
He uses snatches of song and prayer, rhyming jokes and fantasies, and the
literatura de cordel
(rope literature) - broadsheets telling of juicy local gossip, murders, laments, ghostly apparitions, sold in the marketplace hanging on strings of twine. All this tells the story of Nelo, who escapes from the empty drought-ridden farmland to Brazil's teeming cities, only to return home shattering everyone's dreams.
First published to acclaim in 1976 as the erratic military censorship was on the wane,
now ranks in Brazil as a modern classic, available in English only from Readers International.