It surprises no one that the charming but wayward Vadinho dos Guimaraes a gambler notorious for never winning dies during Carnival. His long suffering widow Dona Flor devotes herself to her cooking school and her friends, who urge her to remarry. She is soon drawn to a kind pharmacist who is everything Vadinho was not, and is altogether happy to marry him. But after her wedding she finds herself dreaming about her first husband s amorous attentions; and one evening Vadinho himself appears by her bed, as lusty as ever, to claim his marital rights."

Ilheus in 1925 is a booming town with a record cacao crop and aspirations for progress, but the traditional ways prevail. When Colonel Mendonca discovers his wife in bed with a lover, he shoots and kills them both. Political contests, too, can be settled by gunshot...
No one imagines that a bedraggled migrant worker who turns up in town least of all Gabriela herself will be the agent of change. Nacib Saad has just lost the cook at his popular cafe and in desperation hires Gabriela. To his surprise she turns out to be a great beauty as well as a wonderful cook and an enchanting boon to his...

Published here for the first time in English in a brilliant translation by the peerless Gregory Rabassa, "The Discovery of America by the Turks" is a whimsical Brazilian take on The Taming of the Shrew that will remind readers why Jorge Amado is to Portuguese-American literature what Jorge Luis Borges is to Spanish-American literature. It follows the adventures of two Arab immigrants-"Turks," as Brazilians call them-who arrive in the rough Brazilian frontier in 1903 and become involved in a merchant's farcical attempt to marry off his shrew of a daughter.
For more than seventy years,...