The Discovery of America by the Turks

A late novella, written as a tie-in with the celebrations for the 500th anniversary of Columbus's discovery of China Hispaniola. Amado reasons that if Columbus could be said to have "discovered America", the same thing could just as well be said of two Ottoman opportunists who happened to arrive in Bahia on the same immigrant ship in 1903. Raduan becomes a professional poker-player, Jamil a shopkeeper, and there's a comic plot of Raduan trying to marry Jamil off to Adma, fearsome daughter of Ibrahim, proprietor of the Bon Marché drapery.

Amado uses a deceptively simple kind of Arabian Nights narrative style to tell the story, but it's all heavily loaded with irony. If it's a rehash of The taming of the shrew then it's one in which the show more men are shown to be just as shallow and selfish as the women. Ibrahim's chief motivation for marrying off his daughter is to obtain the freedom to go fishing in the mornings again: he apparently sees nothing odd about canvassing a possible suitor for her hand during a party at the local brothel. Amado's narrator seems to be on the side of the men in the battle, but it's not at all clear that the reader is expected to agree with that. show less

As the 500th anniversary of Columbus's "discovery" of America approached, an Italian public relations firm commissioned Amado, along with a Spanish author (Fuentes) and a US author (Mailer), to write novellas related to the "discovery," but the plan fell apart. Nevertheless, Amado wrote this novella, and a delightful sex farce it is.

The "Turks" are not Turks, but a Lebanese and a Syrian coming to the Bahia region of Brazil in the early 19th century. They are traveling on passports from the Ottoman Empire; hence these Arabs are called Turks. Readers of Showdown will find a certain similarity between one of the characters in that novel, a similarity that Amado acknowledges in his preface. Basically, there is an Arab running a store in a show more town in the cacao region of Bahia, or rather his wife runs it. When she dies, everything goes downhill, with his daughters and sons-in-law running the store into the ground. But he has a eldest daughter, age 30, ugly and with a bad temperament. If he can find a responsible man who could run the store and who will marry that daughter, he will make him a partner. A store owner in a place in the countryside is a good prospect, but he dilly dallies, assessing how to make a go of it, store-wise and daughter-wise. In the meantime, a local waiter, who has also been approached with the prospect mulls it over too. There is much sexual innuendo -- and action -- in this novella, which I read in one sitting. show less

There are funny bits, but essentially it all boils down to the ol' patriarchal "what she really needs is..."

Bonita historia, por más que sea una de las cosas más misóginas que he leido en mi vida. De algún modo el autor logra que resulte más divertido que molesto. Quizá tiene que ver el haber leido antes 'Gabriela, clavo y canela', que deja claro que solo está recogiendo el sentimiento de la época que describe y no expresando el propio.

Escrita en 1991, a raíz de una iniciativa relacionada con el V Centenario del descubrimiento de América, Jorge Amado (1912-2001) da rienda suelta en esta novela a su inagotable capacidad de fabulación, a su irreverente sentido del humor y a su desinhibida vitalidad. Procedentes del entonces aún existente imperio otomano, los "turcos" de Amado son dos inmigrantes árabes (el sirio Jamil Bichara y el libanés Raduan Murad), arribados a Brasil en el mismo barco, como tantos y tantos otros inmigrantes a principios del siglo XX. Sus peripecias tras instalarse en el sur de Bahía, «el Eldorado del cacao», son el eje en torno al cual se hila esta entretenida obra que satisface el placer de la lectura y deja al lector una sonrisa en los show more labios.
Escrita en 1991, a raíz de una iniciativa relacionada con el V Centenario del descubrimiento de América, Jorge Amado (1912-2001) da rienda suelta en esta novela a su inagotable capacidad de fabulación, a su irreverente sentido del humor y a su desinhibida vitalidad. Procedentes del entonces aún existente imperio otomano, los "turcos" de Amado son dos inmigrantes árabes (el sirio Jamil Bichara y el libanés Raduan Murad), arribados a Brasil en el mismo barco, como tantos y tantos otros inmigrantes a principios del siglo XX. Sus peripecias tras instalarse en el sur de Bahía, «el Eldorado del cacao», son el eje en torno al cual se hila esta entretenida obra que satisface el placer de la lectura y deja al lector una sonrisa en los labios. show less

Jorge Amado ; ilustrações e arte grafica de Pedro Costa