Jorge Amado

Capitães da Areia é o livro de Jorge Amado mais vendido no mundo inteiro. Publicado em 1937, teve a sua primeira edição apreendida e queimada em praça pública pelas autoridades do Estado Novo. Em 1944 conheceu nova edição e desde então sucederam-se as edições nacionais e estrangeiras, e as adaptações para a rádio, televisão e cinema. Jorge Amado descreve, em páginas carregadas de grande beleza, dramatismo e lirismo poucas vezes igualados na literatura universal, a vida dos meninos abandonados nas ruas de São Salvador da Bahia. Dividido em três partes, o livro atinge um clímax inesquecível no capítulo .Canção da Bahía, Canção da Liberdade., em que é narrada a emocionante despedida de um dos personagens da história, que se afasta dos seus queridos Capitães da Areia .na noite misteriosa das macumbas, enquanto os atabaques ressoam como clarins de guerra.

One bright spring day in 1925, Gabriela arrives from the poverty-stricken backwoods of Brazil to the lively seaside port of Ilhéus amid a flock of filthy migrant workers. Though wearing rags and covered in dirt, she attracts the attention of Nacib, a cafe owner, who is in desperate need of a new cook. So dire is his situation that he hires the disheveled girl. The savvy young woman quickly proves to be an excellent chef and—once well-scrubbed and decently dressed—an eye-catching beauty. Nacib quickly finds himself the owner of the most prosperous business in town—and the employer of its most sought-after woman.

Ilhéus in 1925 is a booming town with a record cacao crop and aspirations for progress, but the traditional ways prevail. When Colonel Mendon�a discovers his wife in bed with a lover, he shoots and kills them both. Political contests, too, can be settled by gunshot... No one imagines that a bedraggled migrant worker who turns up in town-least of all Gabriela herself-will be the agent of change. Nacib Saad has just lost the cook at his popular caf� and in desperation hires Gabriela. To his surprise she turns out to be a great beauty as well as a wonderful cook and an enchanting boon to his business. But what would people say if Nacib were to marry her? Lusty, satirical and full of intrigue, Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon is a vastly entertaining panorama of small town Brazilian life.

Published here for the first time in English in a brilliant translation by the peerless Gregory Rabassa, The Discovery of America by the Turks is a whimsical Brazilian take on The Taming of the Shrew that will remind readers why Jorge Amado is to Portuguese-American literature what Jorge Luis Borges is to Spanish-American literature. It follows the adventures of two Arab immigrants-“Turks,” as Brazilians call them-who arrive in the rough Brazilian frontier in 1903 and become involved in a merchant’s farcical attempt to marry off his shrew of a daughter.