PRIZES to win! PROMOTIONS
Jose Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922 and has been a full time writer since 1979. His work embraces plays, poetry, short stories, non-fiction and several novels and has been translated into more than twenty languages. He has long been regarded as Portugal's most influential living writer for his novels, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and most recently, Blindness. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Set in early-18th-century Portugal, the novel exploits the rich seam of magic realism lying just below the surface of Latin countries. The impulsive love between lowly Baltasar and Blimunda is drawn in contrast to the cold copulation of the realm's monarchs. Saramago's rich, fantastical meditations on love, religion and monarchy are told with a wickedly sharp, satirical humour that soon convinces that the Nobel Prize awarded to this Portuguese author in 1998 was well deserved. (Kirkus UK)
