''Sweat'' (

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

: ''Suor'') is a Brazilian

Modernist Modernism is both a philosophical and arts movement that arose from broad transformations in Western society during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The movement reflected a desire for the creation of new forms of art, philosophy, an ...

novel A novel is a relatively long work of narrative fiction, typically written in prose and published as a book. The present English word for a long work of prose fiction derives from the for "new", "news", or "short story of something new", itsel ...

. It was written by

Jorge Amado Jorge Leal Amado de Faria (10 August 1912 – 6 August 2001) was a Brazilian writer of the modernist school. He remains the best known of modern Brazilian writers, with his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in ...

in 1934. It has yet to be translated into English.

Background

''Sweat'', Jorge Amado's third novel, was written in Rio de Janeiro in 1934, when he was 22 and an active communist supporter. The next year, the book was translated into Russian and published in Moscow, along with ''

Cacau Claudemir Jerônimo Barreto (born 27 March 1981), known as Cacau (, ), is a former professional footballer who played as a striker. Born in Brazil, he represented Germany at international level. Cacau received German citizenship in February 20 ...

'', his second work. ''Sweat'' is directly linked to the author's personal experience. In 1928, at just sixteen, he took a small room in the

Pelourinho The Historic Center ( US) or Centre ( UK; pt, Centro Histórico) of Salvador de Bahia in Brazil, also known as the Pelourinho (Portuguese for "Pillory") or Pelo, is a historic neighborhood in western Salvador, Bahia. It was the city's cent ...

(in

Salvador, Bahia Salvador (English: ''Savior'') is a Brazilian municipality and capital city of the state of Bahia. Situated in the Zona da Mata in the Northeast Region of Brazil, Salvador is recognized throughout the country and internationally for its cuisine ...

), where he could witness the daily lives of the men and women forced to live in cramped conditions. In a Postface to his book, ''

Captains of the Sands ''Captains of the Sands'' ( pt, Capitães da Areia) is a Brazilian novel written by Jorge Amado in 1937. The novel tells of a gang of one hundred street children. Their ages range from seven to sixteen and they live by begging, gambling, steal ...

'', Amado wrote that ''Sweat'' was the third work in the six-novel cycle he called "The Bahian Novels" in which he had tried to set down the "life, the customs, the language of my State". He described ''Sweat'' as exposing "the most failed aspect of the State, creatures who have already lost everything and expect nothing more from life". Amado writes that he had the action take place "in one of those strange tenements on the Ladeiro do Pelourinho" in Salvador and he did it with an aim, not only because he had met most of the characters in one of those tenements, where he had himself lived, but as much because it seemed to him that only in that environment could the novel take on a tone of revolt in the face of their anguish and misery. In Amado's own words, ''Sweat'' and ''Cacau'' together form the portfolio of an “apprentice novelist”. The novel features concerns that would be returned to in his later works.

The book

The novel is a portrait of the daily misery of urban life in Salvador. The title, ''Sweat,'' indicates both the novel's aim and its earthy style. 600 people live in the building on the Pelourinho, including workers, washerwomen, prostitutes, and anarchists. Their stories follow each other but the main character is the tenement itself. The rooms are divided and subdivided and even the patio is rented out. The only empty spaces are the stairs, which the residents use as a toilet and where rubbish piles up. Amado uses a documentary or modernist style to portray the exploitation of the

working poor The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain und ...

. His use of pieces of descriptive detail gives earthy images of their squalid living conditions but there are also early signs of the romanticism to be found in his later works.

References

{{Jorge Amado 1934 Brazilian novels Modernist novels Novels by Jorge Amado Portuguese-language novels Novels set in Bahia