Synopses & Reviews
Saramago portraits an imaginary encounter between Fernando Pessoa and Ricardo Reis, who venture back to Portugal after the establishment of the dictatorship of general Salazar. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis describes the country during dictatorship and highlights views using Pessoa's poetic aspect which have long been forgotten in history.
Synopsis
From Nobel Prize-winner Jos Saramago, "a capacious, funny, threatening novel" of wandering souls and political upheaval in 1930s Portugal (New York Times Book Review).
The year is 1936, and the dictator Ant 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'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 -- and is followed through each excursion by Pessoa's ghost.
As a fascist revolution roils, and as Reis's path intersects with three relative strangers -- two living, one dead -- Reis may finally discover the reality of his own chimerical existence.
Called "a magnificent tour-de-force, perhaps one of the best novels published in Europe since World War II" (Bloomsbury Review) and "altogether remarkable" (Wall Street Journal), The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis is a PEN Award winner.
Synopsis
The year: 1936. Europe dances while an invidious dictator establishes himself in Portugal. The city: Lisbon gray, colorless, chimerical. Ricardo Reis, a doctor and poet, has just come home after sixteen years in Brazil. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.
About the Author
Saramago was born in Portugal. He won the 1998 Noble Prize for Literature.