Tocaia Grande is a Brazil

Brazil

Brazil , officially the Federative Republic of Brazil , is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people...

ian Modernist novel

Novel

A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....

. It was written by Jorge Amado

Jorge Amado

Jorge Leal Amado de Faria was a Brazilian writer of the Modernist school. He was the best-known of modern Brazilian writers, his work having been translated into some 49 languages and popularized in film, notably Dona Flor and her Two Husbands in 1978...

 in 1984.

Plot

The novel deals with the foundation of a community (the Tocaia Grande of the title, meaning "great ambuscade" in Portuguese), in a fertile area surrounded by large cocoa fazenda

Fazenda

Fazendas were coffee plantations that spread into the interior of Brazil between 1840 and 1896. They created major export commodities for Brazilian trade, but also led to intensification of slavery in Brazil.- Creation of fazendas :...

s owned by "coronel" Boaventura. The ambush was held in the same place by Natario de Fonseca, a jagunço

Jagunço

Jagunço, from the Portuguese zarguncho was the name applied to armed hands or bodyguards, usually hired by farmers and "colonels" in the backlands of the Northeast of Brazil...

 at the service of Boaventura, against the latter's enemies; in reward, Natario is given a small cocoa plantation near the hamlet, and subsequently helps the variegate Tocaia Grande community to grow, until it reaches the status of a town.

The other main characters of the novel are a Lebanese immigrant, Fadul, who owns the main store of Tocaia Grande and is celebrated for his will and physical strength; Castor de Abduim, a beautiful black hammersmith, whose companion, Diva, is killed by cholera

Cholera

Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that is caused by the bacterium Vibrio cholerae. The main symptoms are profuse watery diarrhea and vomiting. Transmission occurs primarily by drinking or eating water or food that has been contaminated by the diarrhea of an infected person or the feces...

; Bernarda, a young prostitute who becomes Natario's lover; and a group farmers from Sergipe

Sergipe

Sergipe , is the smallest state of the Brazilian Federation, located on the northeastern Atlantic coast of the country. It borders on two other states, Bahia to the south and west and Alagoas to the north, and to the east is the Atlantic Ocean...

, whose arrive starts a colourful mixing between their traditions with the Bahia

Bahia

Bahia is one of the 26 states of Brazil, and is located in the northeastern part of the country on the Atlantic coast. It is the fourth most populous Brazilian state after São Paulo, Minas Gerais and Rio de Janeiro, and the fifth-largest in size...

n ones of the first Tocaia Grande's inhabitants.