Jose Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922, he was in his sixties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago died in June 2010.
In the craft of the sentence, José Saramago is one of the great originals... no one writes quite like Saramago, so solicitous and yet so magnificently free. He works as though cradling a thing of magic * Guardian * Saramago has a light, graceful, ironic touch... the paraphernalia of magical realism -- John Banville The author's eccentric voice is as engaging as ever... a fitting cap to a body of work as playful as it is wise * Financial Times * With characteristic dry wit he proceeds to debunk the rosy romance of eternal life * The Times * A compelling work by a fine writer ... the unique Saramagoan style ... gives the impression of a thought experiment to which the writer is merely a catalyst. That impression is a carefully crafted one: true art conceals its art, wrote Ovid * New Statesman * This is a beautifully constructed novel, the tone detached, ironic and playful, perfectly maintained throughout * The Scotsman * A fable-like tale which tips our world on its axis ... a beautiful book, which narrows down with elegance and assurance from wide-screen satire to a deeply strange love story, all the time probing the human condition with gentle compassion * Metro * A genial mix of satire, fantasy and the comically prosaic -- James Urquhart * Financial Times * I wish more novelists writing in English exhibited this much intellectual ambition, and this much humanity and elegance in realising it -- Chris Ross * The Guardian * A beautiful, hopeful novel * Observer *