Novel
Time and the Wind
O continente
Érico Veríssimo · 1949
Synopsis
Santa Fé, an imaginary town in Rio Grande do Sul, in 1895: during the Federalist Revolution, the Sobrado, the house of the Cambarás, is under siege. This siege serves as the frame for seven narratives that go back in time to 1745, to the arrival of the first colonists and the end of the Jesuit missions, then gradually come closer to it: the fountain of the Missions, Ana Terra, a certain Captain Rodrigo, the war. In this way one follows the formation of the province through the Terra, Cambará and Amaral families, held together by women when the men go off to fight.
Context
The novel appeared in 1949, the first part of a trilogy completed in 1962. Its author, who had dreamed of it since 1939, wrote it from 1947 to 1949 after studying the archives of the Jesuit missions and the chronicles of the revolutions of the South, and modelled Santa Fé on Cruz Alta; the female figures who hold the families together owe much to his own mother. The construction alternates seven chronological narratives with fragments of the siege, until past and present meet. Linton Lomas Barrett translated it into English in 1951, André Rougon into French in 1996.
Who it is for
A big novel in two volumes, translated into French; several of its stories, such as that of Ana Terra, read almost like self-contained novels.
Prizes and reception
Antonio Candido saw in it “one of the great novels of Brazilian literature”; the trilogy was adapted for television in 1985.