A masterwork about backcountry life by one of Brazil's most celebrated novelists.Paulo Honório is a sometime field hand who has kicked and clawed and schemed his way to prosperity, becoming master of the decrepit estate São Bernardo, where once upon a time he toiled. He is ruthless in his exploitation of his fellow man, but when he makes a match with a fine young woman, he is surprised to discover that this latest acquisition, as he sees it, may be somewhat harder to handle. It is in Paulo Honório’s own rough-hewn voice that the great Brazilian writer Graciliano Ramos, often compared to William Faulkner, tells this gritty and dryly funny story of triumph and comeuppance, a tour de force of the writer’s art that is beautifully captured in Padma Viswanathan’s new translation.
A masterwork about backcountry life by one of Brazil's most celebrated novelists.
In 1941, a national literary poll in Brazil named Graciliano Ramos one of the country's ten greatest novelists-one of only four living authors on the list. His reputation has only increased there in the sixty years since his death. Brazilian readers fight over which of his novels is their favorite. Now St. Bernardo, his second-to-last novel, has been freshly translated for North American readers. This gritty, dryly funny book tells the story of Paulo Honório, a field hand who learns to read and write in jail, emerging with the ambition of buying and restoring to greatness the now-decrepit property where he was once a day laborer. St. Bernardo, named for his ranch, is the memoir of his rise and fall, written in his own rough-hewn voice. Flavored with subtle ironies and rich local idioms, St. Bernardo will appeal to readers of William Faulkner and Juan Rulfo, anyone who loves a tragicomic story of a striving outsider and self-made man, ruthless and tender in turns.
Shortlisted for the UK Society of Authors' TA First Translation Prize
“The complexities of life in rural Brazil come sharply into focus in
São Bernardo. Nearly a hundred years after its publication, the funny, ruthless narrator of this novel is as fascinating and relevant as any narrator being written today.” —Idra Novey
“I was swept up by the humor, cadence, beautiful weirdness—and above all the voice, relentless and a little nuts, of
São Bernardo.” —Peter Orner
"Viswanathan, through her soulful translation, breathes new life into Ramos’s slangy, unvarnished, beguilingly funny prose. Honorio’s voice might be gruff, but it also sings.” —Eric Puchner
“If we were to take stock of Brazilian writers from the first half of the twentieth century—from among those writers who produced the most relevant parts of their oeuvre in the first half of the twentieth century—and ask which writer has had the greatest impact and influence on the way Brazilian writers write today, I have no doubt that the name of Graciliano Ramos would make the top of the list.” —Paolo Scott,
Asymptote
“This new translation of
São Bernardo from the Brazilian Portuguese by Canadian writer Padma Viswanathan is as much a reiteration as it is a refashioning. . . . Viswanathan has made a precious contribution to the body of English-language literature, adding to it the vibrant voice of one [of] the most important figures of 20th-century Brazilian letters.” —Arthur Ivan Bravo,
The Los Angeles Review of Books “Ribeyro . . . is mildly Borgesian in approach, both stylish and imaginative. . . . Ramos'
metier . . . is a kind of gnarled subtlety and rueful wisdom that lends a quirky, canny element to his appealing story.” —Paddy Kehoe,
RTÉ“Graciliano Ramos’s
São Bernardo is a quick read that grabbed me from the first paragraph. . . . Honório is a fascinating character, and Ramos beautifully renders him through Honório’s own elisions and incapacity to articulate.” —
The Mookse and Gripes 
