SOURCE: "The Stone Made Flesh," in The New York Times Book Review, November 28, 1993, p. 20.

In the following review, Josephs lauds Amado's War of the Saints.

As Jorge Amado's spectacular new novel, The War of the Saints, opens, St. Barbara—or, more properly, "a statue of St. Barbara of the Thunder, famed for her eternal beauty and miraculous powers"—has just been transported across the Bay of All Saints to Bahia for an exhibition of religious art. Suddenly, just after the ship has docked, the statue takes life and steps from her litter, transformed into the living African deity St. Barbara Yansan. Waving politely to the nun and winking at the priest who have accompanied her, she disappears, with a sway of her hips, "into the midst of her people." Literal-minded readers will not get beyond this point, but believers in magic realism will be enthralled with the events...