Show Down [Hardcover]

Jorge Amado (Author), Gregory Rabassa (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 1, 1988

In his unanimously praised novel full of sex and adventure, violence and courage, Amado has created a South American "Western" and people it with wonderfully earthy characters from his childhood.

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Brazilian writer Amado's 22nd novel is an unfocused and somewhat maudlin epic set in the lawless wilds of the Bahian jungle, where thugs and prostitutes ply their dismal trades amidst arbitrary bloodshed and hardship. Despite the many dangers posed by men and nature, fertile land is free for the taking, and hard work soon brings prosperity to a forlorn outpost of misfits. As the town grows, its inhabitants, too, are transformed: a whore becomes a midwife, a bandit turns into a cacao-plantation owner. The savage gives way to the domestic as children are born and wells are dug. This is the American dream come to life in a tropical rain forest, with all the facile sentimentality of a Disney creation. An incorrigible storyteller, Amado creates a vast and colorful cast of characters, most of them likable, all of them exotic. Yet, while much happens in this bookcrammed as it is with battles, love affairs and natural disastersin the long run, nothing happens. With no plot or unifying thread, Amado's wordy prose and run-on sentences create little more than a busy patchwork that lacks pattern and direction. Literary Guild alternate.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

In this 21st novel by Brazil's master storyteller, the central character is a town. Already known to followers of Amado's fiction, Tocaia Grande is here depicted in the days before its elevation to county seat and its change of name to Irisopolis. These are the rawer days of its original settlement some 20 years after the Brazilian emancipation of slaves when it was nothing more than a dump with a store and a cluster of fugitives, whores, and stragglers. It's "every man for himself" in this tropical hinterland whose candidacy as a real town comes only with the arrival of one bona fide family consisting almost miraculously of husband, wife, and children. The richness of this collective saga resides in its diversity of characters. Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 422 pages
• Publisher: Bantam Books; 1st edition (January 1, 1988)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0553051741
• ISBN-13: 978-0553051742
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.2 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 3.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,470,336 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The climax of a rich career, October 3, 2006

By 

Hendon Chubb "Garlic" (Connecticut and Provence) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Showdown (Paperback)

Although this is not a crowd pleaser like Dona Flor or The War of the Saints, it is Amado's greatest novel. He returns to the social concerns of his early novels but treats them with a depth and richness that are the fruition of his long career.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Same Faces, Different Book, January 29, 2002

By 

Thomas F. Ogara (Jacksonville, FL USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Show Down (Hardcover)

In general, I am an admirer of Amado's work, but this is not his best effort. He has once again introduced us to the cast of characters that he grew up with in his native Bahia - the miserably poor of the sertao, the vaqueros, the itinerant peddlars (one of which - a Turk again, no less - is the main character), the narrow-minded clergy, all milling around and not really going much of anywhere. The "Showdown" is a faceoff between bandits, which is a culmination of the events in this little backwater village on the Sao Francisco.

As usual, Amado is very good at providing us with a slice of life and a variety of interesting characters, but the story is a bit too thin in this work. Not up to the level of "Dona Flor" or "Gabriela."

Incidentally, the reference to a Sudbury Horse Classic in the trade reviews for this book are obviously for some other book, apparently an English mystery of the same name. No horses here, except in an incidental way.

2.0 out of 5 stars Tired Amado, February 5, 2011

By 

complitprof - See all my reviews

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This review is from: Showdown (Paperback)

Jorge Amado has been writing about sex in the hinterlands of Brazil for years. It is a tired subject. Amado's writing style is tired, this being his last "book". Bahia of today (2010) is electric with multireligions, petroleum, jeitinhos among friends and non-friends, dynamic women who serve as medical missionaries, and of course a coastal scene which rivals Recife, Rio, and southern-most Brazil. None of this emerges in the writing of Amado -- just male-female disengagement, property issues and short scenes without a plot line. The title in English sounds more Texan than the dream-style of Bahianos. I prefer his earlier novels which sealed a culture in mid-century when the lid on Brazilian people was about to explode.