From the great Brazilian author, an exotic tale of greed, madness, and a dispute between two powerful families over land on the cocoa-rich coast of Bahia A Penguin Classic The siren song of the lush, cocoa-growing forests of Bahia lures them all-the adventurers, the assassins, the gamblers, the brave and beautiful women. It is not a gentle song, but a song of greed, madness, and blood. It is a song that promises riches untold, or death for the price of a swig of rum . . . a song most cannot resist-until it is too late-not Margot, the golden blond prostitute who comes for love; not Cabral, the unscrupulous lawyer who works for one of the Cacao "colonels"; and not Juca, whose ruthless quest to reap the jungle's harvest plants the seeds of his own destruction. For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Gabriela - smelling of cloves, with skin the colour of cinnamon - arrives in Ilheus in 1925, the year of a record cacao harvest and the year in which Colonel Jesuino Mendonca, according to the unwritten law of the day, murders his wife and her lover. Change is in the air. The cacao boom is bringing 'progress' to Ilheus and talk is of canals, bus routes, railways and dredging the harbour. The beautiful Gabriela, however, is indifferent to the political intrigues going on in the name of progress and she despises the town's materialism. Hired by Nacib as his cook, she soon captivates him (and every other man in Ilheus) so that he is forced into a reappraisal of the rules and customs by which he lives.

A Brazilian Lord of the Flies, about a group of boys who live by their wits and daring in the slums of Bahia. They call themselves 'Captains of the Sands', a gang of orphans and runaways who live by their wits and daring in the torrid slums and sleazy back alleys of Bahia. Led by fifteen-year-old 'Bullet', the band - including a crafty liar named 'Legless', the intellectual 'Professor', and the sexually precocious 'Cat' - pulls off heists and escapades against the privileged of Brazil. But when a public outcry demands the capture of the 'little criminals', the fate of these children becomes a poignant, intensely moving drama of love and freedom in a shackled land. Captains of the Sands captures the rich culture, vivid emotions, and wild landscape of Bahia with penetrating authenticity and brilliantly displays the genius of Brazil's most acclaimed author. JORGE AMADO (1912-2001), the son of a cocoa planter, was born in the Brazilian state of Bahia, which he would portray in more than twenty-five novels. His first novels, published when he was still a teenager, dramatize the class struggles of workers on Bahian cocoa plantations. Amado was later exiled for his leftist politics, but his novels would always have a strong political perspective. Not until Amado returned to Brazil in the 1950s did he write his acclaimed novels Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon and Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands (the basis for the successful film and Broadway musical of the same name), which display a lighter, more comic approach than his overtly political novels. One of the most renowned writers of the Latin American boom of the 1960s, Amado has had his work translated into more than forty-five languages. GREGORY RABASSA is a National Book Award-winning translator whose English-language versions of works by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Mario Vargas Llosa, Julio Cortazar, and Jorge Amado have become classics in their own right. COLM TOIBIN, who worked as a journalist in Latin America in the 1980s, is the author of the bestselling novels The Master, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize, and Brooklyn.

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 business. But what would people say if Nacib were to marry her?
Lusty, satirical and full of intrigue, "Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon" is a vastly entertaining panorama of small town Brazilian life.

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.

Set in a Brazilian locale, this is the story of Pedro Archanjo, beloved rogue and fierce activist for social justice, who becomes a posthumous hero when an American intellect discovers his writings. The story flits between Archanjo's lifetime and that of the American professor decades later.

Banished for promiscuity, Tieta returns to the seaside village of Agreste after twenty-six years. Thinking she is now a rich, respectable widow, her mercenary family welcomes her with open arms. But Tieta is forced to reveal her true identity in order to save the town's beautiful beaches from ugly development. For the only way she can stop the factory is to call upon her close connections in Sao Paulo's highest political and financial circles--as only the Madam of the city's ritziest bordello can.

Jorge Amado has been called one of the great writers of our time.  The joyfulness of his storytelling and his celebration of life's sensual pleasures have found him a loyal following.  With The War Of The Saints,  he has created an exuberant tale set among the flashing rhythms, intoxicating smells, and bewitching colors of the carnival. The holy icon of Saint Barbara of the Thunder is bound for the city of Bahia for an exhibition of holy art.  As the boat the bears the image is docking, a miracle occurs and Saint Barbara comes to life, disappearing into the milling crowd on the quay.  Somewhere in the city a young woman has fallen in love, and her prudish guardian aunt has locked her away--an act of intolerance that Saint Barbara must redress.  And when she casts her spell over the city, no one's life will remain unchanged.

In his unanimously praised novel full of sex and adventure, violence and courage, Amado has created a South American "Western" and people it with wonderfully earthy characters from his childhood.

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, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.