José Saramago
1) Blindness
In 1979, José Saramago decided to write a book called Journey to Portugal—and dedicated himself to obtaining the fullest meaning of his title. More than merely journeying in or through his native...
5) The cave
6) Seeing
Senhor José is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor José sets off to follow the thread that may lead
...8) Skylight
11) Cain: A Novel
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
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...
In 1551, King João III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. In The Elephant’s Journey, José Saramago imagines Solomon’s epic journey by foot across Europe with
...Manual of Painting and Calligraphy was José Saramago's first novel. Written eight years before the critically acclaimed Baltasar and Blimunda, it is a story of self-discovery set in Portugal during the last years of Antonio Salazar's dictatorship. It tells the story of a struggling...