SOURCE: "Jorge Amado," in Américas, Vol. 36, No. 3, May/June, 1984, pp. 16-9.

In the following interview, Amado discusses his work and its relationship to other cultures, Brazil, and his own region of Bahia.

If Gabriel García Márquez opened the way for Mario Vargas Llosa, Carlos Fuentes, Ernesto Cardenal and many other Latin American writers in Spanish, it was Jorge Amado who did the same for the Brazilian authors. This writer from Bahia, who doesn't like to talk about himself, was the first to tell the world of Bahia, of Brazil and its people. He was the first to demonstrate that Brazilian literature is less homogeneous than that produced in other Latin American countries since it is a product of the cultural diversity of a vast country.

In Brazil they say that Jorge Amado has done more for Brazilian culture than have all the government departments for...