SOURCE: A review of Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, in The New York Times Book Review, August 17, 1969, p. 33.

In the following review, Gallagher praises Amado's Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, but complains that "It is a pity that Amado mars his achievement by often writing flatly, without discipline or tension."

For the average citizen of São Paulo or Rio, the North-East of Brazil is an area of calamitous suffering he is happy never to have visited. And if this vast, arid region, inhabited by nearly 17 million Brazilians, ever pricks his conscience, it will be to some extent due to the work of three novelists of the North-East, José Lins do Rego, Gracilano Ramos and Jorge Amado.

Amado's early books were renowned for the militant socialist realism he brought to bear, as a member of the Communist party and follower of Luis Carlos Prestes. The relative...