Jorge Amado was born on August 10, 1912, at the Auricídia farm in the Ferradas district of Itabuna, a city in southern Bahia. He was the son of cocoa planter João Amado de Faria and Eulália Leal Amado.

Jorge moved to Ilhéus when he was one year old and spent his childhood there. He went to high school at Antônio Vieira College and Ginásio Ipiranga, in the city of Salvador. During that period, he started doing newspaper work and taking part in literary circles. He helped found the Academy of Rebels.

His first novel, O país do carnaval (The Land of Carnaval), was published in 1931. In 1933 he married Matilde Garcia Rosa and they had a daughter named Lila. That same year he published his second novel, Cacau (Cocoa).

He graduated from the National Law School in Rio de Janeiro in 1935. As a communist militant, he was forced into exile in Argentina and Uruguay in 1941 and 1942, a period when he traveled extensively throughout Latin America. He and Matilde Garcia Rosa separated when he returned to Brazil in 1944.

In 1945, he was elected to the National Constituent Assembly as a member of the Brazilian Communist Party (PCB) and was the federal deputy with the most votes in the State of São Paulo. Jorge Amado drafted the law that guarantees the right to freedom of worship that is still in force today. That same year, he married Zélia Gattai.

In 1947, the year their eldest child, João Jorge, was born, the PCB was banned and its members were persecuted and arrested. Jorge Amado and his family had to seek exile in France, where they lived until the government ordered them to leave. In 1949, Jorge's daughter Lila died in Rio de Janeiro. The Amados lived in Czechoslovakia from 1950 to 1952, and their daughter, Paloma, was born in that country.

After returning to Brazil, Jorge Amado gave up his political militancy in 1955, although he did not leave the Communist Party. From that time on, he devoted himself entirely to writing. On April 6, 1961, he was elected to chair number 23 of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, whose patron is José de Alencar. Its first occupant was Machado de Assis. In addition to holding honorary doctorates from several universities, Jorge Amado was proud of the Candomblé title of Obá, his post at Ilê Axé Opô Afonjá, in Bahia.

Jorge Amado's literary works have been adapted to the screen, stage and television countless times, and are even the theme of Carnival parades throughout Brazil. His books have been translated into 49 languages and published in 55 countries. There are also copies available in Braille and on tape for the blind.

The Jorge Amado House Foundation officially opened in Salvador, Bahia's Largo do Pelourinho in 1987. Since then, it has housed his library and made it available to researchers. The Foundation also aims to develop cultural activities in Bahia.

Jorge Amado died in Salvador on August 6, 2001. He was cremated and his ashes were buried in the garden of his home on Alagoinhas Street on August 10th, the day he would have marked his 89th birthday.

www.jorgeamado.org.br