Brazilian novelist and critic Adonias Filho was one of a handful of innovative writers who set a new course for fiction in his country after World War II. Beginning in 1946, his "cacao trilogy" and other works about the cacao-growing area of southern Bahia established him as a luminary of modern fiction alongside such celebrated writers as Clarice Lispector and João Guimarães Rosa. Comparable to his novels in artistic value are his long short stories, which he called novelas. In addition, he left an important body of literary criticism and theory. As an intellectual leader he was also a respected public figure, able to mediate between the extremes of right and left, especially from the mid 1960s to the early 1980s--the period of military dictatorship and a difficult time in Brazilian history.

The son of Adonias Aguiar and Rachel Bastos de Aguiar, Adonias Aguiar Filho...