Jubiabá

"Jubiabá" is a Brazilian modernist novel written by Jorge Amado in 1935. It was the basis for the 1986 motion picture of the same name, written and directed by Nelson Pereira dos Santos.

It tells the story of the friendship between a poor black youngster from Salvador de Bahia, Antonio Balduino, and a candomblé magician, Jubiabá. After the death of his insane aunt when he was a boy, Balduino is sent to work in a rich white family. However, he has to escape when he is injustly accused of violence towards Lindinalva, the beautiful daughter of his hosts. Balduino thenceforth spends the rest of his youth in freedom as a beggar, and later as a boxer. Depressed after his first defeat, he starts to work in a tobacco plantation, but a bloody feat forces him to flee again. At his return in Bahia, he surprisingly meets back his first love Lindinalva, who now works as a prostitute and, in point of death, entrusts her son to Balduino.

Balduino is then employed as a port worker. His encroachment in the general strike will cause him for the first time a conflict with his old friend Jubiabá, which he considers too much connected to past.