Ancient Tillage

This slim, intensely powerful novel portrays the coming-of-age of a young man named André who grew up on his family’s farm in Brazil but has now fled to an unnamed city in an act of rebellion against his domineering, extremely religious, and constantly sermonizing father. André is also running from feelings for his sister, Ana, illicit desires that he expresses with agonized passion in an almost phantasmagoric scene alone with Ana in the family’s chapel. Numbing his agony with the help of generous amounts of wine, André languishes in a boarding house until his brother, Pedro, comes to bring him home. In prose tonally reminiscent of scripture, the novel explores the interior life of a character on the brink of an emotional and sexual awakening set against the tragic portrayal of a family on the verge of disintegration. Newly translated from a text originally published in 1975, this is an essential and unflinching work that combines torment and desire to arrive at an explosive examination of ancestry and the world we inherit. The novel’s conclusion, taking place at a homecoming party for André, is breathtaking in its almost mythological expansiveness. (Jan.)