Jorge Amado: biography, works, topics covered

Jorge Amado de Farias was born on August 10, 1912, in Itabuna, Bahia, and spent his childhood between his hometown and Salvador. He studied for many years in a boarding school: first at Colégio Antônio Vieira and then at Ginásio Ipiranga, where started to develop his side as a writer with the creation of the little newspaper the telescope, which he distributed to colleagues and relatives, and journalists the homeland and The leaf, from the student union.

In 1927, still a student, but from the day school regime, Jorge began working as a reporter in Bahia Diary. At that time, he received his degree in Candomblé. Jorge Amado was approved at the Faculty of Law of the University of Rio de Janeiro in 1931. That same year, your first novel, The Country of Carnival, was published and received praise.

Read too: Narrative genre – the genre most explored by Jorge Amado

Political persecution and success in literature

Jorge Amado suffered several persecutions because of his political stance.

Because of your

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involvement with the communism, like most writers of the time, he saw his next novel, Cocoa, be apprehended by police officers. For this reason, the writer spent some time exiled in Argentine. Later, between 1936 and 1937, Jorge was stuck for opposing the new state. However, even before that time in prison, the book Cocoa was published and it also became a hit among critics.

In December 1933, the writer from Bahia married his first wife, Matilde Garcia Lopes, with whom he had a daughter, Eulalia. A year later, he published the novels Sweat and jubiabá and he graduated in Law, when the persecutions that would later lead to his arrest began. The book Dead Sea was published and received the Grace Spider award.

While Jorge Amado traveled abroad, the book captains ofand Sand it was publishedo and, back in Brazil, the writer was arrested again when he tried to escape by going to Manaus. Thousands of copies of your published books, seen as revolutionaries, were burned in Salvador by military order.

After short time in prison, Jorge was released in 1938, when he moved to São Paulo. His books began to be translated and published abroad. Still getting involved in political issues, he became editor of the magazines Dom Casmurro and guidelines. In 1942, he published in Buenos Aires the biography The life of Luís Carlos Prestes, in order to help in the amnesty of the communist.

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Once again, Jorge was arrested upon disembarking in Porto Alegre and then he was forbidden to leave the lands of Salvador. At that time he published the book lands of endless, which was not censored. The writer separated from Matilde in 1944.

In 1946, Jorge Amado became more intensely involved with politics and ran for deputy by the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB). Despite being elected, he had his term suspended on account of the party's illegality. During this period, the writer he knewZelia Gattai, with whom he came to live. In 1946, he published the novel about the drought red harvest. A year later, Jorge launched Castro Alves' love and their first child, João Jorge, was born.

In 1949, his daughter Eulalia died of unknown causes. For a long time, Jorge Amado traveled through Europe, even going to China and Mongolia, and wrote the world of peace, in which he made references to the socialist countries visited. In 1951, the daughter Paloma was born and, in the following year, the writer returned to Brazil.

Jorge Amado settled in Rio de Janeiro and began to produce and live off literature modestly. So, in 1958, he wroteGabriela clove and cinnamon, a book that earned him several awards, in addition to having been adapted for TV. At that time, Jorge received one of the highest titles in the candomblé. A while later, the writer launched Dona Flor and her two husbands, which also appeared on screens later.

Jorge Amado suffered a pulmonary edema in the year 1996 and, shortly thereafter, he underwent an angioplasty. From then on, he went through a life of deprivation and sadness, as he could no longer see straight and, therefore, had difficulty reading and writing and not being able to eat more he liked. In 2001, he was admitted with a hyperglycemic crisis and had cardiac fibrillation. Jorge went back to his house, but he got sick again and he ended up dying on august 6th, in Salvador, at 88 years of age.

Themes from the works of Jorge Amado

Jorge Amado is considered a representative of second phase of Modernism in Brazil, focused on regionalist novels. However, his work is divided by literary critics into:

Novels from Bahia or proletarians that portray life in the city of Salvador, as is the case of Sweat, the country of carnival and Sand captains.
Novels linked to the cocoa cycle, which correspond to the books Cocoa and lands of endless.
Customs Chronicles, started with jubiabá and Dead Sea and extending across Gabriela clove and cinnamon.