Books: Brazil's Great Classic

REBELLION IN THE BACKLANDS—Euclides da Cunha. Translated by Samuel Putnam—University of Chicago ($5).

Around 1870 there appeared at the Brazilian port of Baía a "somber anchorite with hair down to his shoulders, a long tangled beard, an emaciated face, and a piercing eye." He was clad in a blue canvas garment and carried a pilgrim's staff. He was young Antonio Conselheiro. For ten years he had been wandering in the backlands of Brazil (hiding there in shame after his wife had run off with a policeman), eating little or nothing, indifferent to...

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