Author Jorge Amado

In  December, I have decided not to write any book reviews, but instead to help you discover and recommend to you two great writers. Here is the first one, Jorge Amado.

Jorge Amado was born on August 12, 1912 in Ilhéus, Bahia, whose society he portrays in acclaimed novels such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. His father was a cocoa planter and his first novel, Cacao, published when he was nineteen, is a plea for social justice for the workers on the cocoa estates south of Bahia. The theme of class struggle continued to dominate his novels in the 1930s and 40s, but with the 50s and Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon (1958), the political emphasis gave way to a lighter, more novelistic approach. It was in this novel, published in the United States when Amado was fifty and enthusiastically received in some fourteen countries, that he first explored the rich literary vein pursued in Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands. Jorge Amado died in 2001.

Jorge Amado has been called “one of the greatest writers...also the most entertaining”. I totally agree with that. In fact, he is one of my preferred writers. I laugh so much when I read his books that people around me think I’m mad. He is the only author I know who has the ability to make the most dramatic and sad situation seem funny, even anecdotal. In his books, he describes a group of characters that are linked in some way to each other. He has great attention to detail for each of the characters, he even gives them nicknames. These multiple characters come to life and create a community or a town. We get carried away by their lives, their world.