Ancient Tillage

by Raduan Nassar, Athina Psillia (Translator)

Overview

A Brazilian master novelist in English at last

For André, a young man growing up on a farm in Brazil, life consists of “the earth, the wheat, the bread, our table, and our family.” He loves the land, fears his austere, pious father, who preaches from the head of the table as if from a pulpit, and loathes himself as he begins to harbor shameful feelings for his sister Ana. Lyrical and sensual, written with biblical intensity, this classic Brazilian coming-of-age novel follows André’s tormented path. He falls into the comforting embrace of liquor as—in his psychological and sexual awakening—he must choose between body and soul, obligation and freedom.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9786180708769
Publisher:	S. Patakis
Publication date:	04/29/2024
Sold by:	Bookwire
Format:	eBook
Pages:	200
File size:	416 KB
Language:	Greek, Modern (1453- )

About the Author

Raduan Nassar was born in 1935 in Pindorama, in the state of São Paolo, Brazil. A Cup of Rage and Ancient Tillage are his two major literary works. Raised in a Lebanese immigrant family, Nassar attended law school at the University of São Paolo and was a journalist and editor for the newspaper Jornal de Bairro. Although hailed around the world as a major writer, Nassar has led a private existence since 1985, dedicated to farming and livestock production.

Karen Sherwood Sotelino has translated novels and short stories from Portuguese into English. Recently, she has taught at Stanford University, where she is a visiting scholar in the department of Iberian and Latin American cultures.

Editorial Reviews

"While reading, and marveling at, Ancient Tillage and A Cup of Rage—both of them set on farms in the Brazilian outback, both of them stylistically bold achievements—we are struck by two other feelings: disappointment that Nassar wrote so little, and disbelief that it took so long to render his unique voice into English."

The National - Malcom Forbes

"Both books remain hot, dense and coarse, full of raw feeling and mental friction. Grainy as dust, dark as dirt. Nassar delivers his portraits of human fallibility and fragility masterfully."

On Art and Aesthetics

"Raduan Nassar became a Brazilian sensation with his first novel. Now published in English, the world will come knocking."

The Independent

"How often, honestly, does the unveiling in translation of a “forgotten genius” live up to the hype? Well, here’s one who does: the Brazilian Raduan Nassar."

Putting in the boot - The Times Literary Supplement - Lorna Scott Fox

"Nassar...pitches into his sentences spanning whole chapters constructions so breathless that it's impossible not to dash through them. But the end of one only activates our craving for the next. This is downhill prose, not for savoring but for devouring."

Bookforum - Becca Rothfeld

2016-10-26
A prodigal son's homecoming gives ample reason to think that everyone might have been better off if he'd just stayed away.Brazilian writer Nassar is being rediscovered in his own country, where, though never quite forgotten, he fell into near silence for 40 years following the publication of this novel and its companion novella, A Cup of Rage. During that time, he retreated to the countryside, where he grew up and took to farming. In this slender story, young André has followed much the same course, having tired of his father's sternly pious ways and gone off to the big city to try to make a life there. It didn't work: "The happiness I had imagined existed beyond our father's realm was no more than an illusion." André is a study in torment, and what torments him the most is a decidedly unhealthy attachment to his sister, Ana: "Ana was my illness, she was my insanity, my air, my splinter and chill, my breath, the impertinent insistence in my testicles." Well, now. When he is not warding off thoughts of Ana, he is out in the sheepfolds and livestock pens, carefully eyeing the "smug nanny-goat" or trying to dissuade his siblings from taking his example and heading off to the metropolis themselves; confesses one to André, perhaps improbably, "I want to be known in the brothels and in the alleys where tramps sleep, I want to do lots of different things, be generous with my own body…." Ah, but that way trouble lies. Nassar's story has all the gloominess of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms, and it's just as packed with allusion to classical mythology and literature, as when, in closing, André's mother cries out "an ancient lament that to this day can still be heard along the poor Mediterranean coast" even if it issues from the Brazilian rain forest. Nassar is tremendously adept at capturing the existential anguish of a troubled mind. It's not easy or uplifting reading, but his dark view of the world commands attention.

Kirkus Reviews