João Guimarães Rosa

João Guimarães Rosa (1908–1967) was a Brazilian novelist, short story writer, poet and diplomat, best known for Grande Sertão: Veredas, published in English as The Devil to Pay in the Backlands. That single novel draws on the spoken language of Brazil's backlands, mixing archaic and colloquial prose with invented words, and it is often set beside James Joyce's Ulysses. He also wrote four short story collections set in the sertão, including Sagarana, and The Third Bank of the River. He died in 1967, the year he was nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature.