Based on Euclides da Cunha, Brazilian writer’s novel, Sertoes (Bushveld) that appeared in Rio de Janeiro in 1902, Sándor Márai’s Verdict in Canudos was published in 1970. Mario Vargas Llosa’s War at the End of the World was written based on the same experience and was published in 1981.
This literary delicacy was in the center of the program supported by the Brazilian Embassy and Latimo Union and hosted by the Cervantes Institute, Budapest.
H.E. András Gulyás, Ambassador, and Professor István Rákóczi introduced the audience with the historic event and its background, which has a moral for today’s world too.
The story takes place at the North-East coast of Brazil where the army kills the sect of false prophet Conselhero and his fanatic followers. Euclides da Cunha takes part in this campaign as a correspondent and writes the unique piece of art of Brazilian literature giving a precise account of the natural, anthropological, sociological and psychological components of the huge North-East wilderness (sertão). Sándor Márai writes about the book: the story of a Brazilian uprising … government army equipped with cannons could not kill a few fanatic savages who did not want to put up with the blessings of white democracy … It is an instructive book about the impossible – he says about the novel then adds: they knew that sometimes it is the impossible that is worth believing in.
Mario Vargas Llosa says about the birth of his book War at the End of the World: “I have never written this novel without Euclides da Cunha and “Sertoes”, from which I discovered not only the Canudos war but also a tragic figure and one of the greatest Latin-American writers. … While writing my novel I went through a unique and extremely rich literary adventure; in libraries in London and Wahington, archives in Rio de Janeiro and Salvador, exhausting roads through bushvelds of Bahía and Sergipe …
