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The daughter of Italian immigrants,
author Zélia Gattai (Zélia Gattai Amado) was born
on July 2, 1916 in the city of São Paulo, where she spent
her childhood and adolescence. Zélia and her family took
part in the political labor movement involving Italian, Spanish
and Portuguese immigrants in the early twentieth century. She wedded
Aldo Veiga when she was 20. Their eight-year marriage produced a
son, Luiz Carlos, who was born in São Paulo in 1942.
One of Jorge Amado's most enthusiastic
readers, Zélia Gattai met him in 1945 when they were campaigning
for amnesty for political prisoners. They became a couple a few
months later. From that time on, Zélia Gattai worked at her
husband's side, typing clean drafts of his original manuscripts
and helping with the editing process.
When Jorge Amado was elected
to the Federal Council in 1946, the couple moved to Rio de Janeiro,
where their son, João Jorge, was born in 1947. A year later,
when the Communist Party was banned, Jorge Amado lost his post and
the family fled into exile.
They lived in Paris for three
years, during which time Zélia Gattai studied French Civilization,
Phonetics and French at the Sorbonne. From 1950 to 1952, the family
lived in Czechoslovakia, where their daughter, Paloma, was born.
Zélia Gattai began taking photographs during their time in exile,
becoming responsible for the visual record of each of the most important
moments in the Bahian author's life.
In 1963, the Amado family moved
to their home in Rio Vermelho in Salvador, Bahia, where Zélia
Gattai set up a darkroom and devoted herself to photography. She
published the photo-biography of Jorge Amado titled Reportagem incompleta/An
Incomplete Story.
At the age of 63, she started
writing her memoirs. The first volume, Anarquistas, graças
a Deus (Anarchists, Thank God) sold 200,000 copies in Brazil by
the 20th anniversary of its publication. Zélia Gattai's works
include nine memoirs, three children's books, a photo-biography
and a novel. Some of her writings have been translated into French,
Italian, Spanish, German and Russian.
The Globo television network
turned Anarquistas, graças a Deus into a miniseries, and
her memoir Um chapéu para viagem (A Hat for Traveling) has
been adapted for the stage.
An honorary Bahian, Zélia
Gattai received the title of Citizen of the City of Salvador in
1984.
In France, she was declared
an Honorary Citizen of the Commune of Mirabeau (1985) and won a
Commendation for Arts and Letters by the French Government (1998).
She is also a Commander of the Order of Merit of Bahia (1994) and
the Order of Prince Henry the Navigator (Portugal, 1986).
The City of Taperoá,
in the State of Bahia, paid tribute to Zélia Gattai by naming
its Culture and Tourism Foundation after the author in 2001.
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