The Golden Harvest.

• Author: Mujica, Barbara

The creator of classics such as Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, Tieta, and Tereza Batista, Brazil's Jorge Amado is one of Latin America's greatest storytellers. Even in this 1944 novel, translated now for the first time into English, Amado's narrative powers are remarkable.

While the author's later works feature lusty women, macho men, juicy plots, and lots of humor, his early novels are highly political. The later novels provide a panoramic view of northern Brazilian society and capture the warmth and vitality of the people of Bahia, yet Amado remains a non-judgmental spectator. In The Golden Harvest, on the other hand, the author has an agenda. He is out to expose the corruption of the moneyed classes the social injustice that has kept the Brazilian farm worker in a state of near servitude for centuries.

Like other Amado stories, The Golden Harvest takes place in Ilheus, the port city of southern Bahia from which cacao is exported. The colonials, or cacao lords, took and held the rich lands surrounding Ilheus by means of violence. They cleared the acres and cultivated the cacao crops, relying on impoverished peasants doubling as hired killers to work and protect it.

As Amado's story begins, the colonials have grown old, affluent and respectable. Still rough and rugged men at heart, their sons, who have not had to fight for their fortune, are spoiled, decadent fops. Motivated by greed, a powerful cabal of exporters, led by Carlos Zude, sets out to ruin the cacao growers and take over their lands. The plan is to force a rise in prices, thereby creating a boom. The unsophisticated colonials and their debauched offspring begin to squander money, running up huge bills and borrowing from exporters against future sales of their cacao. When the exporters unexpectedly lower prices, thereby forcing a bust, the colonials are caught off-guard. With no further credit and no means of paying their debts, they are forced to sell their lands at ridiculously low...