Fastest Gun in the Northeast

THE VIOLENT LAND by Jorge Amado. 336 pages. Knopf. $5.95.

Instead of cattle barons, there were the great landowners. Instead of the open range, there was the green forest that must be cut and cleared for cacao. But, otherwise, the U.S.'s West and Brazil's Northeast were much alike. Author Amado, 52, is himself a nordestino, and here he again celebrates his brawling frontier city of Ilheus and its quick-witted, hard-driving people. His big, lusty novel turns on the long land war between Colonel Horacio da Silveira, who is rumored to have sold his soul to the Devil, and the ferocious Badaro brothers, Juca and Sinho. Neither Juca nor Colonel Horacio would dream of having a face-to-face showdown in Ilheus' main street, but each knew that every tree, every clump of bushes, every dark alley might conceal an assassin.

Amado reads his characters in depth. There is no facile division into good guys and bad guys, and everyone's motives are mixed. The lawyer, Virgilio, who helps Horacio outwit the Badaros, also seduces Horacio's pretty wife. And spade-bearded Sinho Badaro, who has arranged the killing of many men, still agonizes over each decision--in fact, his soul searching destroys the efficiency of his best gunman, Negro Damiao. As in U.S. westerns, the land is the real hero, breeding men as luxuriant, lavish and cruel as itself. Presumably spurred by the success of Amado's Gahriela: Clove and Cinnamon and Home Is the Sailor, Knopf has reissued The Violent Land, which was last published in the U.S. 20 years ago. It is worth reviving as one of the best of Amado's books, which have been published in 31 languages, ranging from Icelandic to Persian. Though he writes in a far more contemporary idiom, Amado is properly considered the Mark Twain of Brazil, and he shares Twain's passion for small-town manners and morals, for scoundrels and card sharps, and for the pomposity of backwoods society, and its pitiable efforts at a cultural life.

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