The article examines antagonistic aspects of the battle of Canudos as portrayed by Euclides da Cunha in Os sertões. In tragic fashion, the rebellion made it apparent that an archaism had not been resolved. The horror of war, the conflict between civilization and barbarism, is still with us one hundred years later - the same conflict that literature foresaw and described. In the realm of fiction (yet no less truthful), this conflict was also portrayed in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, published in 1902, the same year as Os sertões.
rebellion in Canudos; Euclides da Cunha; Os sertões; rebellion in the backlands; Brazilian culture