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Graphic design
Kiko Farkas / Máquina Estúdio e Elisa Cardoso/ Máquina Estúdio |
21.00 x 14.00 cm, 296 pp.
ISBN 9788535912937
84,90 |
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Wartime
The Second World War as seen from Bahia
Chronicles (1942-1944), 2008
" Wartime is a mini trench", that was the description Jorge Amado gave of the daily column he penned for the Salvador broadsheet O Imparcial in a text written to mark its first anniversary. Collected in book form for the first time, this selection of 103 of the best installments of his column reveals a writer engaged in the allied struggle to defeat Nazi fascism in Europe, Africa and Asia.
Yet Jorge Amado’s understanding of that crucial moment in history went beyond the politico-military front. Among his withering broadsides against Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Plínio Salgado – and his lauding of Stalin -, he also defended values dear to civilization in all spheres of activity, chiefly freedom, tolerance and peace.
Hence we can find articles in praise of the humanist role of artists and intellectuals, the contribution of women to the war effort, the recently launched novels of José Lins do Rego and Ilya Ehrenburg, the “great art” of Lasar Segall and the participation of stars like Clark Gable and Ernest Hemingway at the Front.
The vehement rhetoric is often accompanied by a very Brazilian sense of humor, such as when the Bahian writer calls the Spanish dictator “Chico Franco, the scamp of Madrid”.
It is their warm and humanist perspective, always in defense of the common man - especially the underprivileged - that approximates these militant chronicles to the lyrical prose of his novels.
Selected by Myriam Fraga, director of the Fundação Casa de Jorge Amado, and the anthropologist Ilana Seltzer Goldstein, Hora da Guerra comes with an elucidating preface by the historian Boris Fausto and a folder of historical images of the war and the personalities mentioned in the columns. |
