Jorge Amado

Who was Jorge Amado?

Jorge Amado lived from August 10, 1912 to August 6, 2001. Jorge Leal Amado de Faria ( ZHOR-zhee; Brazilian Portuguese: [ˈʒɔʁʒi aˈmadu]; 10 August 1912 – 6 August 2001), known as Jorge Amado, was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. Amado was born on Saturday, 10 August 1912, on a farm near the inland city of Itabuna, in the south of the Brazilian state of Bahia. Jorge Leal Amado de Faria, known as Jorge Amado, was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. 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. He won the 1984 International Nonino Prize in Italy.

He also was Federal Deputy for São Paulo as a member of the Brazilian Communist Party between 1947 and 1951. He was the eldest of four sons of João Amado de Faria and D. Eulália Leal.

Historical significance

He remains the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, with his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, including Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands in 1976, and having been nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature at least seven times.