The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell
First English-language edition
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| Author | Jorge Amado |
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| Original title | A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro D'água |
| Translator | Barbara Shelby |
| Country | Brazil |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Genre | Crime, Regionalism |
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Publication date
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1959 |
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Published in English
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1965, Alfred A. Knopf |
| Media type | Print (Hardback & Paperback) |
| Pages | 97 pp (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | (paperback edition) |
| OCLC | 23444229 |
The Two Deaths of Quincas Wateryell (A Morte e a Morte de Quincas Berro D'água), is a 1959 Brazilian modernist novella by Jorge Amado. It was first published in the Brazilian magazine Senhor. In 2012, it was republished in English as The Double Death of Quincas Water-Bray.
The book is about what happens after Quincas Wateryell, a popular bum who lives in the slums of Salvador, Bahia, is found dead one morning. Two groups of people compete over Quincas's memory: his new friends and his old family. To his family, led by his daughter Vanda, Quincas Wateryell is Joaquim Soares da Cunha, formerly an "exemplary employee of the State Rent Board." According to Vanda, her father disgraced the family by walking out on them, calling Vanda and her mother Dona Otacilia "vipers" and Vanda's husband Leonardo a "silly ass." Despite all their efforts to hide what really happened, Joaquim Soares da Cunha became Quincas, "vagabond king of the honky-tonks" and "patriarch of the prostitutes." Leonardo attempts to hide it from his coworkers, and Vanda tries to keep it from her friends, but they cannot ignore the reputation that Joaquim Soares da Cunha has earned in the local press as Quincas Wateryell.
Now, Vanda, Leonardo, and Quincas's sister Aunt Marocas and brother Eduardo, must tend to the body and give it a proper burial, without attracting too much attention to Quincas and his past. They settle on a simple suit and shoes, but no underwear, because no one will ever see that, and order a casket and candles fit for a church. That night they gather around the casket to keep watch over Quincas, each trying to ignore his leering smile, which reminds them of how much he despised them. Gradually, they go home, leaving Quincas to be watched by his friends from the slum.
The cold reception that the news of Quincas's death is received by his family is juxtaposed by the way his friends from the slum receive the same news. His closest friends are Curió, a store barker in Shoemaker's Hollow, who paints his face like a clown to attract people; Bangs, a towering Black who makes his living as a card sharp; Private Martim, a soldier who had been discharged from the army who lived off the generosity of the women he was frequently engaged to; and Breezy, who supported himself catching frogs and selling them to medical researchers for experiments. The four men lead the neighborhood in mourning for Quincas, wailing "Daddy's gone!"
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