SOURCE: "Truth and Tomfoolery in the Tropics," in The Los Angeles Times Book Review, January 3, 1994, pp. 3, 7.

In the following review, Wyszpolski praises Amado's War of the Saints, which he calls "a novel so loud you can find it with the lights out."

Jorge Amado wrote his first novel in 1931 when he was 19-years-old. The title, Carnival Country, could be applied to the body of work he's been amassing ever since.

This is the Brazilian novelist who gave Dona Flor two husbands (one living; one dead, but livelier), and he's still mixing wry, ribald poetry with literary soap opera. Even now, Amado remains idealistic, boyishly romantic, a jester and a humanist whose compassion for the downtrodden is unstinting. What makes it all rather fun is that Balzac seems to be whispering into one ear while Henry Miller whispers into the other.

Now there's The War of the Saints, a...