Jorge Amado

Jorge Amado was a Brazilian writer who is considered one of the most important literary figures of the 20th century. He wrote novels, short stories, essays, and journalism, exploring themes of identity, language, time, and solitude. He was born to a wealthy family in Itabuna, Bahia, in 1912, and moved to Rio de Janeiro in 1930, where he started his literary career. He published his first work, Fantoches, in 1932, with a sequence of short stories, mostly in the form of short plays. The following year, he saw his first great success with the novel Clarissa. He married Matilde Garcia Rosa in 1931 and had a daughter, Lila, in 1933. He divorced Matilde in 1945 and married Zélia Gattai, with whom he had three more children: João Jorge, Paloma and Eulália. He worked as an editor and director of the publishing house Editora Globo, where he promoted Brazilian literature and culture. He also taught Brazilian literature at the University of California, Berkeley, and was the director of the Department of Cultural Affairs of the Organization of American States in Washington, D.C. He was a member of the Brazilian Communist Party and a deputy, a senator, and a minister of agriculture. He was also a member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters and the Historical and Geographical Institute of Brazil. He wrote several books on Brazilian history and culture, such as História da Literatura Brasileira and Brasil: Terra e Povo. He is best known for his epic trilogy O Tempo e o Vento, which spans two centuries of the history of Rio Grande do Sul and Brazil, through the lives of several generations of a family. He also wrote other acclaimed novels, such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Tieta, Captains of the Sands, and Tent of Miracles. He died of heart failure in 2001, at the age of 88. He is widely regarded as a master of the Portuguese language and a pioneer of modernist literature in Brazil.