In this short novel, the aristocratic Badaros family is pitted against the middle-class planter Colonel Horacio Silveira in a struggle to obtain a crucial piece of land for the growing of cacao. Amado's true subject—and one he frequently comes back to—is the effect of the Bahia region's vast cacao plantations on the local citizens and the communities in which they live.

    "The Form of the Sword" is a short story by Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges, first published in July 1942 in La Nación, and included in the 1944 collection Ficciones, part two.