Jorge Amado
| Jorge Amado | |
|---|---|
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| Born | Jorge Leal Amado de Faria 10 August 1912 Itabuna, Bahia, Brazil |
| Died | 6 August 2001 (aged 88) Salvador, Bahia, Brazil |
| Occupation | Writer, professor |
| Nationality | Brazilian |
| Alma mater | Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Law |
| Literary movement | Modernism |
| Notable works | Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Tieta, Captains of the Sands |
| Spouse | Zélia Gattai (1945–2001) (his death) |
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria (Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈʒɔʁʒi lɛˈaw ɐˈmadu dʒi fɐˈɾi.ɐ], 10 August 1912 – 6 August 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. He remains the best known of modern Brazilian writers, with his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in 1978. His work reflects the image of a Mestiço Brazil and is marked by religious syncretism. He depicted a cheerful and optimistic country that was beset, at the same time, with deep social and economic differences.
He occupied the 23rd chair of the Brazilian Academy of Letters from 1961 until his death in 2001.
Amado was born on a farm near the inland city of Itabuna, in the south of the Brazilian state of Bahia. He was the eldest of four sons of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal. The farm was located in the village of Ferradas, which, though today is a district of Itabuna, was at the time administered by the coastal city of Ilhéus. For this reason he considered himself a citizen of Ilhéus. From his exposure to the large cocoa plantations of the area, Amado knew the misery and the struggles of the people working the land and living in almost slave conditions. This was to be a theme present in several of his works (for example, The Violent Land of 1944).
As a result of a smallpox epidemic, his family moved to Ilhéus when he was one year old, and he spent his childhood there. He attended high school in Salvador, the capital of the state. By the age of 14 Amado had begun to collaborate with several magazines and took part in literary life, as one of the founders of the Modernist "Rebels' Academy".
Amado published his first novel, The Country of Carnival, in 1931, at age 18. He married Matilde Garcia Rosa and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. The same year he published his second novel, Cacau, which increased his popularity. He studied law at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro Faculty of Law but never became a practising lawyer. His leftist activities made his life difficult under the dictatorial regime of Getúlio Vargas. In 1935 he was arrested for the first time, and two years later his books were publicly burned. His works were banned from Portugal, but in the rest of Europe he gained great popularity with the publication of Jubiabá in France. The book had enthusiastic reviews, including that of Nobel Prize Award winner Albert Camus.
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