The Novels of José Saramago

The Novels of José Saramago PDF Author: David Gibson Frier
Publisher: Iberian and Latin American Stu
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
A comprehensive introduction for the English-speaking reader to the novels of Portugal's best-known literary figure, José Saramago. The book covers both his acclaimed historically-based fictions and his more recent, allegorical works. Attention is paid to questions of ideological content, and the exploitation of specifically Portuguese literary and cultural traditions.

The Novels of José Saramago

The Novels of José Saramago PDF Author: David Gibson Frier
Publisher: Iberian and Latin American Stu
ISBN:
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 254

Get Book Here

Book Description
A comprehensive introduction for the English-speaking reader to the novels of Portugal's best-known literary figure, José Saramago. The book covers both his acclaimed historically-based fictions and his more recent, allegorical works. Attention is paid to questions of ideological content, and the exploitation of specifically Portuguese literary and cultural traditions.

Blindness

Blindness PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0156007754
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" whose victims are confined to a vacant mental hospital, while a single eyewitness to the nightmare guides seven oddly assorted strangers through the barren urban landscape

Baltasar and Blimunda

Baltasar and Blimunda PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547537174
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 357

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Book Description
“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.

Skylight

Skylight PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0544090020
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
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.

The Cave

The Cave PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547537980
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
An unassuming family struggles to keep up with the ruthless pace of progress in “a genuinely brilliant novel” from a Nobel Prize winner (Chicago Tribune). A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year and a New York Times Notable Book Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices. Marçal works there as a security guard, and Cipriano drives him to work each day before delivering his own humble pots and jugs. On one such trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. People prefer plastic, apparently. Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds, and Cipriano and Marta set to work—until the order is cancelled and the penniless trio must move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their new apartment, Cipriano and Marçal investigate; what they find transforms the family’s life, in a novel that is both “irrepressibly funny” (The Christian Science Monitor) and a “triumph” (The Washington Post Book World). “The struggle of the individual against bureaucracy and anonymity is one of the great subjects of modern literature, and Saramago is often matched with Kafka as one of its premier exponents. Apt as the comparison is, it doesn’t convey the warmth and rueful human dimension of novels like Blindness and All the Names. Those qualities are particularly evident in his latest brilliant, dark allegory, which links the encroaching sterility of modern life to the parable of Plato’s cave . . . [a] remarkably generous and eloquent novel.” —Publishers Weekly Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

The History of the Siege of Lisbon

The History of the Siege of Lisbon PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547540345
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 323

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Book Description
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

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547540043
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 378

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Book Description
A fictional account of the life of Christ “illuminated by ferocious wit, gentle passion, and poetry”—from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Skylight (Los Angeles Times Book Review). For José Saramago, the life of Jesus Christ and the story of his Passion were things of this earth: a child crying, a gust of wind, the caress of a woman half asleep, the bleat of a goat or the bark of a dog, a prayer uttered in the grayish morning light. The Holy Family reflects the real complexities of any family, but this is realism filled with vision, dream, and omen. Saramago’s deft psychological portrait of a savior who is at once the Son of God and a young man of this earth is an expert interweaving of poetry and irony, spirituality and irreverence. The result is nothing less than a brilliant skeptic’s wry inquest into the meaning of God and of human existence. “Enough to assure [Saramago] a place in the universal library and in human memory.”—The Nation “Fiction that engages the mind as well as the spirit.”—Kirkus Reviews “Mixes magic, myth, and reality into a potent brew.”—Booklist Praise for José Saramago “The greatest writer of our time.”—Chicago Tribune “A literary master.”—The Boston Globe “Saramago is the most tender of writers . . . With a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, and a quality that can only be termed wisdom. We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measure.”—The New York Times “Saramago’s fiction operates in a realm not far from fable: the territory of Kafka, Gogol, and Borges.”—Los Angeles Times

The Collected Novels of Josè Saramago

The Collected Novels of Josè Saramago PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0547581009
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 3869

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Book Description
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.

The Stone Raft

The Stone Raft PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: HMH
ISBN: 0547545312
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
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

Seeing

Seeing PDF Author: José Saramago
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN: 0547544715
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 327

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Book Description
A strange protest triggers a descent into paranoia and chaos in this “illuminating parable”—a sequel to the Nobel Prize-winning author’s Blindness (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian, UK). On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has bothered to come out to vote. The politicians are growing jittery. Should they reschedule the elections for another day? Around three o’clock, the rain finally stops. Voters promptly rush to the polling stations, as if they had been ordered to appear. But when the ballots are counted, more than 70 percent are blank. In response to this mass act of rebellion, a state of emergency is declared. But are the authorities acting blindly? The word evokes terrible memories of the plague of blindness that hit the city four years before, and of the one woman who kept her sight. Perhaps she is the one behind the blank ballots. A police superintendent is put on the case. What begins as a satire on governments and the dubious efficacy of the democratic system turns into something far more sinister. As the story unfolds, “the humor is still tender but the tone darkens, tension rises” (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian, UK).