João Guimarães Rosa (Portuguese: [ʒuˈɐ̃w ɡimaˈɾɐ̃jz ˈʁɔzɐ, ˈʒwɐ̃w -]; 27 June 1908 – 19 November 1967) was a Brazilian novelist, short story writer, poet and diplomat.

[5] Rosa also published four books of short stories in his lifetime, all of them revolving around the life in the sertão, but also addressing themes of universal literature and of existential nature.

In 1938, he served as assistant-consul in Hamburg, Germany, where he met his future second wife, Aracy de Carvalho Guimarães Rosa, the only Brazilian woman to be officially granted the title of Righteous among the nations for her assistance to Jews escaping the Third Reich.

After postponing his acceptance for four years, he finally assumed his position in 1967, just three days before passing away in the city of Rio de Janeiro, victim of a heart attack, at the summit of his diplomatic and literary career.

In turn, Rosa began pursuing a literary career by inscribing a collection of twelve short-novels in a contest, in 1938, whose jury was chaired by the then already prestigious Graciliano Ramos.

Rosa, however, would craft this outlaw manner of living to a type of existential condition according to which bravery and faith are the two driving forces of life.

Vivid descriptions of landscapes (most notably in the short-novel São Marcos, “Saint Mark”, where mystical lore of popular witchcraft and the vividness of nature are blended together) and animals, especially bird flocks and groups of cattle, populate the pages of the book, not only in an attempt to capture the backdrop of the geographic sertão, but also in close correspondence with the plot of the stories and as an extended metaphor for the solitude of man and his pursuit of transcendence.

The noted narrative O Burrinho Pedrês ("The Brindled Donkey"), for example, contains anthological passages where Rosa intensely manipulates the sonority of the sentences, whether mimicking the metric of the traditional verse-form of the popular songs of the sertão or employing onomatopoeia and alliteration and juxtaposing several words that relate to the field of cattle breeding to textually recreate the sounds of the passing herds.

Two old sertanejos rescue him and give him cares in their house; during his convalescence, a priest administers blessings to him and promises the violated man that all persons are intended to a particular and decisive moment of salvation.

Once cured, he proclaims his wish to go to heaven "nem que seja a porrete" ("even though by a cudgel"), and engages vigorously in farm working and good deeds and finds the companionship and friendliness of the jagunço leader Seu Joaõzinho Bem-Bem, who, reckoning the man's vocation to arms, invites him to his group, an offer which Nhô Augusto refuses in order to comply with his wish of ascending towards God.

For the second edition, the collection was divided into three parts, now usually published separatedly: Noites do Sertão (“Nights of the Sertão”); Manuelzão e Miguelim (a play on words with the names of two characters from the stories, using Portuguese augmentative and diminutive suffixes, translating reasonably as “Big Manuel and Little Miguel”); and, “No Urubuquaquá, no Pinhém” (“In the Urubuquaquá, in the Pinhém”, the names being locations in the stories).

The very name of the collection points to this fact: the "corps de ballet" it refers to are the conjunction of symbols and ideias that figure repeatedly across the seven short-novels, reappearing here and there in this or that manner in order to gain yet another level of meaning.

Each time the message is told, its conveyors slightly alter its contents, until the poet ultimately gives it the form a mythical ballad, which he sings at a party attended by the expedition members.

Upon listening to the ballad, Pedro Orósio understands its hermetic symbolism to refer to himself and his pretentious men, which proves to be correct, and he is capable of saving his life after being warned by the "message of the hill".

Rosa intervenes the descriptions of the landscapes found by the German man's expedition with the successive versions of the story that the madmen, the child and finally the poet retell.

His sole novel, the book began as yet another short-novel that he continuously expanded and is written in the form of a monologue by the jagunço Riobaldo, who details his life to an educated listener, whose identity, while unknown, defines him as an urban man.

Riobaldo mixes the wars of the jagunços, which form the most straightforward part of the novel's plot, with his musings on life, the existence of God and the Devil – his greatest concern –, the nature of human feelings and the passage of time and memory, as well as several short anecdotes, often allegories illustrating a point raised in his narrative.

[14] Riobaldo's account frequently returns to the central topic of his discourse, which he proclaims as the reason for his telling his life-story, as he expects, albeit ironically so, an answer from his listener: whether or not the Devil, and therefore evil, exists.

According to Walnice Galvão, Riobaldo seems to reason that nothing ever is nor remains, but inside everything is its potential negation, which might easily suppress its anterior positive form.

The story, addressing the themes peculiar to Rosa's oeuvre and told in first person from the point of view of an observer, recounts the absurd event of a man who decides to live inside a boat in the middle of a water stream, giving no explanation for his actions nor achieving, apparently, anything with it.