The novel 'Gabriela' was published in Brazil in 1958 and had the effect of an exploding bomb. 20,000 copies were sold in two weeks, and 120,000 within a year. The novel was published in Russian in 1961, and, according to Ilya Ehrenburg, a friend of Amado, 'People here read 'Gabriela' without stopping.'
'Gabriela' is a sunny novel. Its main character is sincere, simple-minded, selfless, and loves life in all its manifestations.
Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a famous Brazilian writer, public and political figure. Academician of the Brazilian Academy of Arts and Letters (1961, chair No. 23 of 40).
He was born in 1912 on the Auricídia fazenda in the state of Bahia. A year later, because of a smallpox epidemic, his family was forced to move to the city of Ilhéus, where Amado spent his entire childhood, and the impressions of this period influenced his later creative work. He studied at the University of Rio de Janeiro in the law faculty, where he first encountered the communist movement.…
