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“A romance and an adventure, a rumination on royalty and religion in 18th-century Portugal and a bitterly ironic comment on the uses of power.” —The New York Times Portugal, 1711. The Portuguese king promises the greedy prelates of the Church an expansive new convent, should they intercede with God to give him an heir. A lonely priest works in maniacal solitude on his Passarola, a heretical flying machine he hopes will allow him to soar far from the madness surrounding him. A young couple, brought together by chance, live out a sweet, if tormented, romance. Meanwhile, amid the fires and horrors of the Inquisition, angry crowds and abused peasants rejoice in spectacles of cruelty, from bullfighting to auto-da-fe; disgraced priests openly flout God’s laws; and chaos reigns over a society on the brink of disaster. Weaving together multiple storylines to present both breathtaking fiction and incisive commentary, renowned Portuguese writer and winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, José Saramago spins an epic and captivating yarn, equal parts historical fiction, political satire, religious criticism, and whimsical romance. Hailed by USA Today as “an unexpected gem,” Baltasar and Blimunda is a captivating literary tour de force, full of magic and adventure, exquisite historical detail, and the power of both human folly and human will.
This collection, available exclusively in e-book form, brings together the twelve novels (and one novella) of the great Portuguese writer José Saramago, with an introductory essay by Ursula Le Guin. From Saramago's early work, like the enchanting Baltasar & Blimunda and the controversial Gospel According to Jesus Christ, through his masterpiece Blindness and its sequel Seeing, to his later fables of politics, chance, history, and love, like All the Names and Death with Interruptions, this volume showcases the range and depth of Saramago’s career, his inimitable narrative voice, and his vast reserves of invention, humor, and understanding.
A proofreader realizes his power to edit the truth on a whim, in a “brilliantly original” novel by a Nobel Prize winner (Los Angeles Times Book Review). Raimundo Silva is a middle-aged, celibate clerk, proofing manuscripts for a respectable publishing house. Fluent in Portuguese, he has been assigned to work on a standard history of the country, and the twelfth-century king who laid siege to Lisbon. In a moment of subversive daring, Raimundo decides to change just one single word of text—a capricious revision that completely undoes the past. When discovered, his insolent disregard for facts appalls his employers—save for his new editor, Maria Sara. She suggests that Rainmundo take his transgressions even further. Through Rainmundo and Maria’s eyes, what transpires is an alternate view of history and a colorful reinvention of a debatable truth. It’s a serpentine journey through time where past and present converge, fact becomes myth, and fiction and reality blur—especially for Rainmundo and Maria themselves, who begin to find themselves erotically drawn to each other. “Walter Mitty has nothing on Raimundo Silva . . . this hypnotic tale is a great comic romp through history, language and the imagination.” —Publishers Weekly Translated by Giovanni Pontiero
From the Nobel Prize-winning author: “A capacious, funny, threatening novel” of wandering souls and political upheaval in 1930s Portugal (The New York Times Book Review). The year is 1936, and the dictator António de Oliveira Salazar is establishing himself in Portugal, edging his country toward civil war. At the same time, Dr. Ricardo Reis has returned home to Lisbon after a long sojourn in Brazil. What’s brought him back is word that the great poet, Fernando Pessoa, has died. With no intention of resuming his practice, Reis now dabbles in his own poetry, wastes his days strolling the boulevards and back streets, engages in affairs with two different women—and is followed through each excursion by Pessoa’s ghost. As a fascist revolution roils, and as Reis’s path intersects with three relative strangers—two living, one dead—Reis may finally discover the reality of his own chimerical existence. “A rich story about human relationships and dreams.”—The New York Times Called “a magnificent tour-de-force, perhaps one of the best novels published in Europe since World War II” (The Bloomsbury Review) and “altogether remarkable” (The Wall Street Journal), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is a PEN Award winner and stands among the finest works by the author of Blindness. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero
A stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. "This is a shattering work by a literary master."--The Boston Globe A New York Times Notable Book of the Year A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses--and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit.
A “marvelously amusing” political fable in which part of the European continent breaks off and drifts away on its own (Publishers Weekly, starred review). A Nobel Prize winner who has been called “the García Márquez of Portugal” (New Statesman) chronicles world events on a human scale in this exhilarating allegorical novel. One day, quite inexplicably, the Iberian Peninsula simply breaks free from the European continent and begins to drift as if it were a sort of stone raft. Panic ensues as residents and tourists attempt to escape, while crowds gather on cliffs to watch the newly formed island sail off into the sea. Meanwhile, five people on the island are drawn together—first by a string of surreal events and then by love. Taking to the road to explore the limits of their now finite land, they find themselves adrift in a world made new by this radical shift in perspective. As bureaucrats ponder what to do about their unusual predicament, the intertwined lives of these five strangers are clarified and forever changed by a physical, spiritual, and sexual voyage to an unknown destination. At once an epic adventure and a profound fable about the state of the European project, The Stone Raft is a “hauntingly lyrical narrative with political, social, and moral underpinnings” (Booklist) that “may be Saramago’s finest work” (Los Angeles Times). Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero
Published for the very first time, an early novel by Nobel Laureate and literary master José Saramago that tells the intertwined stories of the residents of a faded Lisbon apartment building in the late 1940s.
A “winkingly blasphemous retelling of the Old Testament” by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gospel According the Jesus Christ (The New Yorker). In José Saramago final novel, he daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament. Placing the despised murderer Cain in the role of protagonist, this epic tale ranges from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah’s Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, and the trials of Job. Again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. “And one thing we know for certain,” Saramago writes, “is that they continued to argue and are arguing still.” "Cain's vagabond journey builds to a stunning climax that, like the book itself, is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career."—Publishers Weekly, starred review This ebook includes a sample chapter of Jose Saramago’s Blindness.
In the last years of Salazar's dictatorship, a struggling young artist is commissioned to paint the portrait of a wealthy client and struggles to capture his likeness while acknowleging his artistic limitations.
Everyone has gone away... We too should no longer be here. Luanda, 1975. The Angolan War of Independence has been raging for at least a decade, but with the collapse of the Salazar dictatorship, defeat for the Portuguese is now in sight. Thousands of settlers are fleeing back to Portugal to escape the brutality of the Angolan rebels. Rui is fifteen years old. He has lived in Luanda all his life and has never even visited the far-away homeland - although he has heard many stories. But now his family are finally accepting that they too must return, and Rui is filled with a mixture of excitement and dread at the prospect. But just as they are leaving for the airport, his father is taken away by the rebels, and the family must leave without him. Not knowing if the father is alive or dead - or if they will ever find out what has become of him, Rui, his mother and sister try to rebuild their lives in their new home. This turns out to be a five star hotel in a quiet, seaside suburb of Lisbon, where returnee families are crammed into luxurious rooms by the dozen. These palatial surroundings are a cruel contrast with the reality of returnee life. The hotel becomes a curious form of purgatory as the families wait to discover what will become of them - ever conscious of the fact that they are hardly welcome back in their homeland. Rui has his own personal struggle with his new life: growing up, dropping out of school, facing discrimination, and the ever-present worry over his mother's deteriorating health and his father's fate. And then one night Rui's father returns from the dead. Translated from the Portuguese by Ángel Gurría-Quintana