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I have singled out, rather arbitrarily it must be admitted, a few of the characteristic works that preceded the appearance of Graça Aranha's Canaan, the novel that was lifted into prominence by Guglielmo Ferrero's fulsome praise of it as the "great American novel." For South America, no less than North, is hunting that literary will o' the wisp.
It has been called, by Mérou , "the best novel written in South America by a South American," a compliment later paid by Guglielmo Ferrero to Graça Aranha's Canaan. Viscount Taunay's famous work has been translated into French twice, once into English, Italian, German, Danish, and even Japanese. The scene is laid in the deserted Matto Grosso, a favorite background of the author's.
Aranha's masterpiece is of far broader conception than the other two; it adds to their lyricism an epic sweep inherent in the subject and very soon felt in the treatment. It is, in fact, a difficult novel to classify, impregnated as it is with a noble idealism, yet just as undoubtedly streaked with a powerful realism.
It is natural that he should have taken such a liking to the book, for Aranha's work is of intense interest to the reader who looks for psychological power, and Ferrero himself is the exponent of history as psychology rather than as economic materialism. "The critics," he says, "will judge the literary merits of this novel.
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