Showdown

Showdown

Jorge Amado

A classic Brazilian "Western" full of romance and adventure, violence and courage, and peopled with wonderfully earthy characters from the legendary author's childhood. Set in Bahia at the turn of the century, Showdown is brimming with the gunmen, fugitives, prostitutes and other characters who settled that sunbaked northeastern state. Jorge Amado has returned to some of his earliest, most radical concerns, confronting Brazilian society, memory, and mythmaking, and aiming to show, by anecdote, how the Brazil of the modernizing present has buried its (criminal) past. The Brazil Amado writes about in Showdown shares many of the traditions of the American frontier. Showdown is a combination of the old Amado, who wrote Bahian historical novels, and the new Amado, with the spirit of Gabriela.