In accordance with our meta agreement to have topic challenges and a later meta agreement to have topic challenges lasting for two months and overlapping by one month, it is time to announce the October–November 2021 topic challenge.

Based on the number of votes (+5), the next topic challenge will be

Jorge Amado

This will be the second topic challenge for Portuguese literature, after Os Lusíadas / The Lusiads in February and March of this year.

What's a topic challenge?

See the meta posts linked above, and also this main Meta post. In short, during October and November 2021 you are invited to try to get hold of one of the works of Jorge Amado and ask questions about it.

Participation is not obligatory in any sense, and questions on other works are more than welcome during October and November too; they just won't count as part of this topic challenge.

How can I take part?

By getting hold of one of the works of Jorge Amado and asking good questions about it. Questions about these works should be tagged with jorge-amado, portuguese-literature and a tag for the work (if it is a book-length work). We'll keep a list of all such questions in an answer to this meta post.

Below is Tsundoku's presentation:

Jorge Amado (1912 – 2001) was a Brazilian novelist whose works have been translated into 49 languages. He started his writing career as a modernist but later adopted a more conventional style. In 1937, his books were publicly burned in Brazil; they were also banned in Portugal, though they were successful elsewhere in Europe. His novel Jubiabá, for example, was hailed by Albert Camus as “a magnificent and haunting” book.

According to the obituary in The Guardian,

[r]eaders in 60 countries have been attracted by his sensual and socially critical depiction of Brazil's immense cultural diversity and by his celebration of the vitality and resilience of its people - above all the poor and dispossessed of his native north-eastern state of Bahia. In the 1940s and 1950s, Amado spent several years in exile because the Brazilian authorities did not appreciate his political views.

According to the obituary in Los Angeles Timese, Amado was revered as the "Balzac of Brazil"

Some of his books can be borrowed on Archive.org, for example, the English translation of Dona Flor and Her Two husbands. Several translations have been published by Penguin Random House.

What's next?

• Vote for the next topic challenge (November–December), or propose your own!