Vidas Secas is a novel by twentieth-century Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian writer Graciliano Ramos

Graciliano Ramos

Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira was a Brazilian Post-Modernist writer, politician and journalist. In most of his novels he depicts the precarious situation of the poor inhabitants of the Brazilian sertão.-Life:Graciliano Ramos de Oliveira was born in the city of Quebrangulo, in the Brazilian State...

, written in 1938

1938 in literature

The year 1938 in literature involved some significant events and new books.-Events:* The trilogy, U.S.A. by John Dos Passos, is published containing his three novels The 42nd Parallel , 1919 , and The Big Money ....

. It tells the cyclical story of a family of five: Fabiano, the father; Sinhá Vitória, the mother; two sons (just called boys) and their dog called Baleia (whale

Whale

Whale is the common name for various marine mammals of the order Cetacea. The term whale sometimes refers to all cetaceans, but more often it excludes dolphins and porpoises, which belong to suborder Odontoceti . This suborder also includes the sperm whale, killer whale, pilot whale, and beluga...

 in Portuguese

Portuguese language

Portuguese is a Romance language that arose in the medieval Kingdom of Galicia, nowadays Galicia and Northern Portugal. The southern part of the Kingdom of Galicia became independent as the County of Portugal in 1095...

) in the poverty stricken and arid Brazilian northeast

Northeast Region, Brazil

The Northeast Region of Brazil is composed of the following states: Maranhão, Piauí, Ceará, Rio Grande do Norte, Paraíba, Pernambuco, Alagoas, Sergipe and Bahia, and it represents 18.26% of the Brazilian territory....

. One of the distinguishing characteristics of the book is that it is written in said cyclical manner, making it possible to read the first chapter as a continuation of the last chapter, reflecting the cycle of poverty and desolation in the Sertão

Sertão

In Portuguese, the word sertão first referred to the vast hinterlands of Asia that Lusitanian explorers encountered. In Brazil, the geographical term referred to backlands away from the Atlantic coastal regions where the Portuguese first settled in South America in the early sixteenth century...

. Another distinguishing characteristic is that the dog

Dog

The domestic dog is a domesticated form of the gray wolf, a member of the Canidae family of the order Carnivora. The term is used for both feral and pet varieties. The dog may have been the first animal to be domesticated, and has been the most widely kept working, hunting, and companion animal in...

 Baleia is considered the most sensible and human character.

It is often considered amongst the most important works in Brazilian literature

Brazilian literature

Brazilian literature is written in the Portuguese language by Brazilians or in Brazil, even if prior to Brazil's independence from Portugal, in 1822...

, with a "dry", concise style of writing.

Film

Vidas Secas was adapted into a highly praised film by Nelson Pereira dos Santos, in 1963, and would become a landmark for the Cinema Novo

Cinema Novo

Cinema Novo was practised by Brazilian filmmakers in the 1950s and 1960s. In Portugal, Novo Cinema flourished after the 1960s, where it lasted, inspired by Italian Neo-Realism and the French movement of the New wave, the direct cinema techniques, and by the ideals the Carnation Revolution up to...

movement.