<div>An unassuming family struggles to keep up with the ruthless pace of progress in &ldquo;a genuinely brilliant novel&rdquo; 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 Mar&ccedil;al in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices. Mar&ccedil;al 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&mdash;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 Mar&ccedil;al investigate; what they find transforms the family&rsquo;s life, in a novel that is both &ldquo;irrepressibly funny&rdquo; (The Christian Science Monitor) and a &ldquo;triumph&rdquo; (The Washington Post Book World). &ldquo;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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s cave . . . [a] remarkably generous and eloquent novel.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa</div>

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The Cave

<div>A &ldquo;marvelously amusing&rdquo; 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 &ldquo;the Garc&iacute;a M&aacute;rquez of Portugal&rdquo; (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&mdash;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 &ldquo;hauntingly lyrical narrative with political, social, and moral underpinnings&rdquo; (Booklist) that &ldquo;may be Saramago&rsquo;s finest work&rdquo; (Los Angeles Times). Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero</div>

The Stone Raft

<div>A &ldquo;wonderfully twisted meditation on identity and individuality&rdquo; from a Nobel Prize&ndash;winning author who pushes fiction to its very limits (The Boston Globe). As this novel by the author of Blindness and All the Names begins, Tertuliano M&aacute;ximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed history teacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But during the night, when he is awakened by noise, he finds the VCR replaying the video and watches in astonishment as a man who looks exactly like him&mdash;or, more specifically, exactly like he did five years earlier, mustachioed and fuller in the face&mdash;appears on the screen. Against his own better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursue his double. As he roots out the man&rsquo;s identity, what begins as a whimsical chase becomes a probing investigation into what makes us human. Can we be reduced to our outward appearance, rather than the sum of our experiences? The inspiration for the film Enemy starring Jake Gyllenhaal and directed by Denis Villeneuve, The Double is a timeless novel from a writer John Updike described in The New Yorker as &ldquo;like Faulkner, so confident of his resources and ultimate destination that he can bring any impossibility to life by hurling words at it.&rdquo; &ldquo;It&rsquo;s tempting to think of [The Double] as his masterpiece.&rdquo; &mdash;The New York Times Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa </div>

The Double

<div>A proofreader realizes his power to edit the truth on a whim, in a &ldquo;brilliantly original&rdquo; 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&mdash;a capricious revision that completely undoes the past. When discovered, his insolent disregard for facts appalls his employers&mdash;save for his new editor, Maria Sara. She suggests that Rainmundo take his transgressions even further. Through Rainmundo and Maria&rsquo;s eyes, what transpires is an alternate view of history and a colorful reinvention of a debatable truth. It&rsquo;s a serpentine journey through time where past and present converge, fact becomes myth, and fiction and reality blur&mdash;especially for Rainmundo and Maria themselves, who begin to find themselves erotically drawn to each other. &ldquo;Walter Mitty has nothing on Raimundo Silva . . . this hypnotic tale is a great comic romp through history, language and the imagination.&rdquo; &mdash;Publishers Weekly Translated by Giovanni Pontiero </div>

The History of the Siege of Lisbon

<div>From the Nobel Prize-winning author: &ldquo;A capacious, funny, threatening novel&rdquo; of wandering souls and political upheaval in 1930s Portugal (The New York Times Book Review). The year is 1936, and the dictator Ant&oacute;nio 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&rsquo;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&mdash;and is followed through each excursion by Pessoa&rsquo;s ghost. As a fascist revolution roils, and as Reis&rsquo;s path intersects with three relative strangers&mdash;two living, one dead&mdash;Reis may finally discover the reality of his own chimerical existence. &ldquo;A rich story about human relationships and dreams.&rdquo;&mdash;The New York Times Called &ldquo;a magnificent tour-de-force, perhaps one of the best novels published in Europe since World War II&rdquo; (The Bloomsbury Review) and &ldquo;altogether remarkable&rdquo; (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 </div>

Overdrive

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

<div>From a Nobel Prize winner: &ldquo;A psychological, even metaphysical thriller that will keep you turning the pages . . . with growing alarm and alacrity.&rdquo; &mdash;The Seattle Times A Washington Post Book World Favorite Book of the Year Senhor Jos&eacute; is a low-grade clerk in the city&rsquo;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 Jos&eacute; sets off to follow the thread that may lead him to the woman&mdash;but as he gets closer, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would ever have wished. The loneliness of people&rsquo;s lives, the effects of chance, the discovery of love&mdash;all coalesce in this extraordinary novel that displays the power and art of Jos&eacute; Saramago in brilliant form.</div>

All the Names

<div>&ldquo;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.&rdquo; &mdash;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&rsquo;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, Jos&eacute; Saramago spins an epic and captivating yarn, equal parts historical fiction, political satire, religious criticism, and whimsical romance. Hailed by USA Today as &ldquo;an unexpected gem,&rdquo; 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.</div>

Baltasar and Blimunda

<div>&ldquo;The Portuguese Nobel Prize winner&rsquo;s delightful posthumous novel recounts the [16th century] travels of an Indian elephant&hellip;from Lisbon to Vienna&rdquo; (The New Yorker).In 1551, King Jo&atilde;o III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. In The Elephant&rsquo;s Journey, Jos&eacute; Saramago imagines Solomon&rsquo;s epic journey by foot across Europe with his Hindu keeper Subhro along for the adventure.Accompanied by the Archduke, his new wife, and the royal guard, these unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformation and civil wars. They are witnessed by scholars, historians, and wide-eyed ordinary people as they make their way through the storied cities of northern Italy, brave the Alps, cross the Mediterranean Sea, and at last, make their way toward their grand entry into the imperial city.&ldquo;A tale rich in irony and empathy, regularly interrupted by witty reflections on human nature and arch commentary on the powerful who insult human dignity.&rdquo;&mdash;Los Angeles Times</div>

The Elephant's Journey

<div>A strange protest triggers a descent into paranoia and chaos in this &ldquo;illuminating parable&rdquo;&mdash;a sequel to the Nobel Prize-winning author&rsquo;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&rsquo;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, &ldquo;the humor is still tender but the tone darkens, tension rises&rdquo; (Ursula K. Le Guin, The Guardian, UK).</div>

Seeing

<div>A &ldquo;winkingly blasphemous retelling of the Old Testament&rdquo; by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gospel According the Jesus Christ (The New Yorker). In Jos&eacute; 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&rsquo;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. &ldquo;And one thing we know for certain,&rdquo; Saramago writes, &ldquo;is that they continued to argue and are arguing still.&rdquo;&quot;Cain&#39;s vagabond journey builds to a stunning climax that, like the book itself, is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career.&quot;&mdash;Publishers Weekly, starred reviewThis ebook includes a sample chapter of Jose Saramago&rsquo;s Blindness.</div>

Cain

<div>A fictional account of the life of Christ &ldquo;illuminated by ferocious wit, gentle passion, and poetry&rdquo;&mdash;from the Nobel Prize-winning author of Skylight (Los Angeles Times Book Review). For Jos&eacute; 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&rsquo;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&rsquo;s wry inquest into the meaning of God and of human existence. &ldquo;Enough to assure [Saramago] a place in the universal library and in human memory.&rdquo;&mdash;The Nation &ldquo;Fiction that engages the mind as well as the spirit.&rdquo;&mdash;Kirkus Reviews &ldquo;Mixes magic, myth, and reality into a potent brew.&rdquo;&mdash;Booklist Praise for Jos&eacute; Saramago &ldquo;The greatest writer of our time.&rdquo;&mdash;Chicago Tribune &ldquo;A literary master.&rdquo;&mdash;The Boston Globe &ldquo;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.&rdquo;&mdash;The New York Times &ldquo;Saramago&rsquo;s fiction operates in a realm not far from fable: the territory of Kafka, Gogol, and Borges.&rdquo;&mdash;Los Angeles Times</div>

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ

<div>A dreamer petitions his king for a boat&mdash;and gets more than he bargained for&mdash;in &ldquo;this richly enigmatic short story&rdquo; by the Nobel Prize-winning author (Kirkus).&ldquo;A man went to knock at the king&#39;s door and said, Give me a boat. The king&#39;s house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. But the king spent all his time sitting at the door for favors (favors being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking at the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear . . .&quot; So begins this beautifully illustrated and deceptively simple fable. Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him, the reader will soon discover. In a departure from his linguistically dense and sprawling historical novels, Jose Saramago presents a philosophic love story worthy of Swift or Voltaire.</div>

The Tale of the Unknown Island

<div>This novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author asks what happens when the grim reaper decides to stop reaping: &ldquo;A novel to die for.&rdquo;&mdash;The Washington Post On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration&mdash;flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home&mdash;families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots. Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small d, were to become human and fall in love? &ldquo;This novel has many pleasures.&rdquo;&mdash;The New York Times &ldquo;Arguably the greatest writer of our time.&rdquo;&mdash;Chicago Tribune</div>

Death with Interruptions

<div>The Nobel Prize&ndash;winning author explores his homeland in &ldquo;this monumental work, a literary hybrid&rdquo; of cultural history, literary nonfiction, and travelogue (Publishers Weekly). In 1979, Jos&eacute; Saramago decided to write a book called Journey to Portugal&mdash;and dedicated himself to obtaining the fullest meaning of his title. More than merely journeying in or through his native country, he wanted to achieve a deep encounter with it, foregoing the conventional assumptions and the routines of tourist guides. Instead, he scoured the country with the eyes and ears of an observer fascinated by the ancient myths and history of his people. Recording his experiences and observations across the length and breadth of Portugal, Saramago brings the country to life as only a writer of his brilliance can. Whether an inaccessible medieval fortress set on a cliff, a wayside chapel thick with cobwebs, or a grand mansion in the city, the extraordinary places of this land come alive with kings, warriors, painters, explorers, writers, saints, and sinners. Infused with the tenderness and intelligence that have become familiar to his readers, Saramago&#39;s Journey to Portugal is an ode of love for a country and its rich traditions.</div>

Journey to Portugal

<div>The denizens of a rundown building in 1940s Lisbon come to sparkling life in this lost early novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author of Blindness. The renowned Portuguese author Jose Saramago was at the beginning of his career when he submitted his novel Skylight for publication in 1953. It then sat lost among stacks of manuscripts for thirty-six years. Published posthumously according to Saramago&rsquo;s wishes, the world can finally enjoy this &ldquo;fascinating and startlingly mature work&rdquo; set in 1940&rsquo;s Lisbon (Boston Globe). The inhabitants of a faded apartment building are struggling to make ends meet: Silvio the cobbler and his wife take in a disaffected young lodger; Dona L&iacute;dia, a retired prostitute, is kept by a businessman with a roving eye. Humble salesman Emilio&rsquo;s Spanish wife is in a permanent rage; beautiful Claudinha&rsquo;s boss lusts for her; Justina and her womanizer husband live at war with each other. Happy marriages, abusive relationships, jealousy, gossip, love&mdash;Skylight is a portrait of ordinary people painted by the master of the quotidian, a great observer of the immense beauty and profound hardship of the modern world. &ldquo;There is no shortage of wonders to be found in [Skylight].&rdquo; &mdash;Washington Post</div>

Skylight

<div>A disgruntled portrait artist in 1970s Portugal turn to writing in the Nobel Prize-winning author’s debut novel, now available in English translation. 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 artist who is commissioned to paint a portrait of an influential industrialist. Disheartened by his squandered talent, the artist soon undergoes a creative and political awakening when he discovers the possibilities of writing. The brilliant juxtaposition of a passionate love story and the crisis of a nation foreshadows the themes of Saramago’s major works.</div>

Manual of Painting and Calligraphy

<div>The Nobel Prize–winning author of Blindness recalls the days of his youth in Lisbon and the Portuguese countryside in this charming memoir. José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José. Small Memories traces the formation of a man who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world’s most respected writers. Shifting between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this mosaic of memories looks back into the author’s boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family’s blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago’s early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read to poring over a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière.</div>

Small Memories

<div>A family of Portuguese farmers struggle to survive as world events pass them by in “a novel that resounds with relevance for our own time” (New York Times Book Review). Winner of the City of Lisbon Prize Celebrated author Jose Saramago has delighted readers around the world with his imaginative tales and evocative depictions of life in his native Portugal. His novel Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family—poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago’s own grandparents. Set in Alentejo, a southern province of Portugal known for its vast agricultural estates, the novel charts the lives of the Mau Tempos as national and international events rumble on in the background—the coming of the republic in Portugal, the two world wars, and an attempt on the dictator Salazar’s life. Yet nothing really impinges on the grim reality of the farm laborers’ lives until the first communist stirrings. Raised from the Ground is Saramago’s most deeply personal novel, the book in which he found the signature style and voice that would win him the Nobel Prize in Literature.</div>

José Saramago

Books By José Saramago (18 Books)