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Graphic design
Kiko Farkas / Máquina Estúdio e Mateus Valadares / Máquina Estúdio |
Illustrations
Andrés Sandoval, Fernando Vilela e Joana Lira |
18.50 x 12.50 cm, 216 pp.
ISBN 9788535916225
48,00 |
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Box – Three illustrated tales
Tale, 2010
Famous for his copious novels, Jorge Amado was also an occasional short story writer. These brief narratives, though little known, encompass many of the themes that made Amado’s name - the Bahia microcosm, roguery, prostitution, religion, eroticism, death -, and so serve as excellent gateways onto the Bahian writer’s universe. This special box set contains three beautifully-crafted editions of these tales, illustrated by renowned graphic artists and with commentary by some of the major names in Portuguese-language literature.
The first of these, De como o mulato Porciúncula descarregou seu defunto (How the mulatto Porciúncula unloaded his corpse) comes with illustrations by Andrés Sandoval and commentary by Mariana Amado Costa and José Eduardo Agualusa. Originally published in the magazine Senhor in 1959, it narrates two different stories. The first is occult in tone, and tells of the taciturn Gringo, who, even after downing liters of cachaça, still refuses to speak about the death he supposedly carries on his back. The second, which unfolds gradually, is a story of the Platonic love between the mulatto Porciúncula and Mary of the Veil, a prostitute obsessed with weddings who was kicked out of home by her violent father after losing her virginity to a colonel’s son.
The story O milagre dos pássaros (Miracle of the Birds) is illustrated by Joana Lira, with commentary by Ana Miranda. First published in 1979, it recounts events from the town of Piranhas, in Alagoas, on the banks of the San Francisco River. It can be read as a bawdy satire on marital and extramarital relations in the northeastern backlands. The miracle in question concerns the spectacular escape of the poet and troubadour Ubaldo Capadócio, a recent blow-in, from the homicidal rage of Captain Lindolfo Ezequiel, who catches him in bed with his wife, the beautiful and much-coveted Sabô.
Completing the trio is As mortes e o triunfo de Rosalinda (The deaths and triumph of Rosalinda), illustrated by Fernando Vilela and with commentary by the Angolan Pepetela. Published in 1965 in the short story collection Os dez mandamentos (The Ten Commandments), alongside Marques Rebelo, Carlos Heitor Cony, João Antonio and Campos de Carvalho, among others, the narrative holds a place sui generis in the work of Jorge Amado. The tale is a first-person verbal torrent by Rosalinda’s confessed killer to an interlocutor who changes by the minute, alternately represented by a soldier, a bishop, a judge and a mother superior, among other figures of authority.
Throughout his rant, Rosalinda emerges as a fantastic being, the protagonist of many lives and many deaths across the four corners of the globe. No matter under what guise she appears, she always ends up putting masculine supremacy in check, thus driving her lover into a murderous rage. A fierce satire of established power, the book subverts both literary convention and logical loops.
With their meandering prose and outlandish denouements, the three tales offer delicious morsels of magic realism, compounded by the accompanying illustrations. |
