The Brazilian novelist Jorge Amado (born 1912) was best known in the 1930s for his novels of social protest. By the 1950s he had evolved into a compelling storyteller more apt to poke fun at the establishment than to denounce it. His lyricism, imagination, and humor have given him a worldwide reputation and following.

Jorge Amado was born on his father's cacao plantation along the eastern seaboard of Brazil, an area just then emerging from a period of violent struggles for land among the intrepid frontiersmen who opened it up. His novels are almost all set either in this region or in the city of Salvador (Bahia), where he was sent to secondary school. As a 16-year-old contributor to short-lived reviews, he began rebelling against the stuffiness of literary canons, an urge to which he gave further expression in his first halting novel, O pals do carnaval (1931; Carnival Country...