Tereza Batista: Home from the Wars
First edition
|
|
| Author | Jorge Amado |
|---|---|
| Original title | Tereza Batista cansada de guerra |
| Translator | Barbara Shelby |
| Country | Brazil |
| Language | Portuguese |
| Publisher | Livraria Martins Editora S.A. |
|
Publication date
|
1972 |
|
Published in English
|
1975 |
| ISBN | |
Tereza Batista: Home from the Wars (Portuguese: Teresa Batista Cansada de Guerra) is a Brazilian modernist novel. It was written by Jorge Amado in 1972 and was published in English in 1975, with a translation by Barbara Shelby.
Tereza Batista: Home from the Wars is one of Jorge Amado's later novels. While his earlier work provided a left-wing criticism of the economic and environmental exploitation of Brazil, the later novels, beginning with Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, became more of a celebration of Brazilian sensuality, accompanied by a fascination with candomblé and the religious influences brought over from Africa. Tereza Batista, the seventh novel after Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, is in the same vein, showing affection for the poor of Bahia together with an emphasis on prostitutes and candomblé. He continues in Tereza Batista to use oral narrative with roots in the tradition of popular poetry and folklore. The novel thus contains similarities with another earlier work, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands and with Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon in its treatment of love, its social critique, and the atmosphere of Salvador, together with critical portraits of the rich, contrasted with a sympathetic approach to the poor.
According to the author, Gabriela and Dona Flor are two characters with whom people easily identify; hence their popularity. "With Tereza Batista I tried to create a third image of the Brazilian woman – sensual, romantic, courageous, long-suffering, decent." However, others have observed that the precise difference between Tereza and her predecessors is open to some debate.
Tereza Batista won international fame: the headquarters of the Italian Feminist Club, an old palazzo on Via Ragabella in Milan, was named Tereza Batista House. Like several of Amado's works, the novel was turned into a Brazilian soap opera or miniseries and broadcast in 1992 on the Brazilian network Rede Globo.
...
Wikipedia