The world's threats are universal like the sun but Ricardo Reis takes shelter under his own shadow.

Back in Lisbon after sixteen years practising medicine in Brazil, Ricardo Reis wanders the rain-sodden streets. He longs for the unattainably aristocratic Marcenda, but it is Lydia, the hotel chamber maid who makes and shares his bed. His old friend, the poet Fernando Pessoa, returns to see him, still wearing the suit he was buried in six weeks earlier. It is 1936, the clouds of Fascism are gathering ominously above them, so they talk; a wonderful, rambling discourse on art, truth, poetry, philosophy, destiny and love.

A unique, meditative, funny, politically astute masterpiece by one of Europe's greatest writers

About the Author
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.

Reviews
The greatest of his novels * New Statesman *
Lovely...a work of fluent and amazing gracefulness * Independent *
A capacious, funny, threatening novel * New York Times Review of Books *
He has created a body of work of luminous power: ironic, intellectually playful, dense and strange * Scotsman *
Shows Saramago to be a novelist of the grandest sort...it is a dramatic work of great philosophical weight, filtered through a refined contemplative intelligence * Independent *


Awards
Winner of Independent Foreign Fiction Award 1993.



Book Information
ISBN 9781860465024
Author Jose Saramago
Format Paperback
Page Count 384
Imprint The Harvill Press
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 266g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 23mm