The Devil to Pay in the Backlands

New York: Alfred Knopf, (1963). First edition (U.S.), 1st printing. 8vo. 494 pp. Original forest green cloth covered boards, stamped in gold, black, green in original unclipped ($5.95) dust-jacket. Light wear to corners, and edges in particular. A few trivial tears and chips to edges, particular chipping to spine crown, though well preserved for its current age. Light toning to spine. Mild rubbing and handling wear. Protected in archival mylar. Book is tight, square and firm. Light shelf wear to edges. Page edges lightly toned, top stain still vibrant. Interior clean and unmarked. A collector’s copy.

Dust Jacket: Near Fine

Hardcover: Near Fine

“In his old age, a former backlands gunman spends three days telling a stranger the story of his adventures on the road, in an attempt to understand his violent past as well as a world caught between the forces of good and evil. Joāo Guimarāes Rosa was born in 1908 in the rural interior of the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais, where many of his works, including The Devil to Pay in the Backlands, are set. Although his intellectual and professional pursuits took him far from his rural beginnings, he never severed his ties to his home state, particularly to its central and northern cattle-raising regions. Rosa always considered himself to be at heart a cowboy and a man of the backlands, the Brazilian hinterland known in Portuguese as the sertao.”