''The Violent Land'' (
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 ...
: ''Terras do Sem Fim'') 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 ...
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
1943
Events
Below, the events of World War II have the "WWII" prefix.
January
* January 1 – WWII: The Soviet Union announces that 22 German divisions have been encircled at Stalingrad, with 175,000 killed and 137,650 captured.
* January 4 – ...
and published in English in 1945. It describes the battles to develop
cacao plantations in the forests of the
Bahia
Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 Federative units of Brazil, states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo (sta ...
state of Brazil. Amado wrote that "No other of my books. . . is as dear to me as ''The Violent Land'', in it lie my roots; it is from the blood from which I was created; it contains the gunfire that resounded during my early infancy", and suggested that the novel belongs to a distinct Brazilian "literature of cacao".
By 1965, the book had been adapted as a film, as well as for the stage, television and radio.
Background
The ''Violent Land'' was written when Jorge Amado was thirty-one and, as a communist, had gone into exile in Uruguay. It is set in the
cocoa
Cocoa may refer to:
Chocolate
* Chocolate
* ''Theobroma cacao'', the cocoa tree
* Cocoa bean, seed of ''Theobroma cacao''
* Chocolate liquor, or cocoa liquor, pure, liquid chocolate extracted from the cocoa bean, including both cocoa butter and ...
or cacao-growing areas of the state of
Bahia
Bahia ( , , ; meaning "bay") is one of the 26 Federative units of Brazil, states of Brazil, located in the Northeast Region, Brazil, Northeast Region of the country. It is the fourth-largest Brazilian state by population (after São Paulo (sta ...
and draws heavily on Amado's own personal experiences as a son of a cocoa planter, as did several of his earlier novels.
Amado was born in
Ilheus, the port from which much of Brazil's cocoa was exported. As Alfred MacAdam notes in his introduction to the 2013 Penguin edition, the battles between cocoa planters that he records "will inevitably remind today's readers of the warfare between drug cartels in any number of Latin American countries."
The novel recounts the warfare between cocoa 'colonels', the large plantation owners seeking to achieve dominance over a wide area. Ambushes, legal chicanery, stealing plantations and taking possession of virgin forest are all methods employed to achieve this dominance. As Amado points out in the 1965 preface, the cocoa lands "were fertilized with blood. They were barbarous lands, where banditry and death, implacable hatred and the cruellest revenge flourished." He goes on to describe gun battles he witnessed and tells us that his father was wounded in one such battle.
Plot
The two most important planters are Colonel Horacio da Silveira and Colonel Sinhô Badaró. Between their lands lies a large area of virgin forest, which both men have long coveted. Among the numerous people who head to the region in search of wealth are several who come to support one side or the other. Dr. Virgilio Cabral, a lawyer, becomes an ally of da Silveira. Another is Captain João Magalhães, a professional gambler and an opportunist. Among his admirers is Dona Ana Badaró, the colonel's daughter, who is also the heir to the family fortune.
Cabral falls in love with Ester, da Silveira's beautiful wife. They know that they will both be killed if the husband finds them out. Cabral is professionally successful, for he finds an old survey of the contested land and registers the title in da Silveira's name. The Badaró family and its supporters retaliate by burning the registry office and all the records. They then hire Magalhães to do a survey for them, even though he knows nothing about surveying. This leads da Silveira to form alliances with other, smaller landholders and eventually emerge victorious after many battles.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Violent Land
Modernist novels
1943 Brazilian novels
Novels by Jorge Amado
Portuguese-language novels
Alfred A. Knopf books