Saramago - Visitors Recommend

Visitors Recommend

José Saramago »


All the Names (Todos os nomes)	It's a book full of names and full of people; because meeting people and staying in touch is a thing we are really needing to do nowadays. I love this book because it's very well written and expresses what I feel too: to really know people is an objective for life. /Andre, 15, Portugal All the names shows how one moment, one mistake can be so significant that it will completely change you. Senhor Jose has so many lives, so many stories at his fingertips, and once he starts looking into only one of them he finally experiences something exciting like adventure and friendship in his life. /Clara, 18, Germany

Baltasar and Blimunda (Memorial do convento) Excerpts »	I like what he writes and the story impressed me. /Teresa, 19, Portugal I like it because it is a metafora of the life. /Luís Martini, 30, Brazil I like it, because in this book Saramago talks about the Portuguese history. /Daniela, 19, Portugal A terrible force in the struggle to find beauty and love, through the use of despaired cynicism and sarcasm, in a falling world. /Frederick Dorsan, 17, Canada It is a wonderful story of love between a special man and his gifted loved one and their journey through the human consciousness. /Emil Nilsson, 27, Sweden

Blindness (Ensaio sobre a cegueira)	I loved the fact that there were no actual names given to the characters for instance "the Dr's wife, the girl with dark glasses." I love the way that the narrator inserts thoughts into the text. Although some people would say it is painful to read but thats what I loved about it. It painted a very vivid picture in my mind and the picture remains with me even today. /Josh Toone, 27, United States It is earthy and haunting. I would not recommend it for people prior to college because it is graphic. But it is amazing. /Jennifer, 22 I really enjoyed this book because, in my opinion, it is a very nice metaphora. Blindness is, in fact, the reflection of what many people live everyday: difficult circumstances and indifference. However, as the book also indicates, there is always a way to start again, to continue walking. /Silvia Quinte, 20 It's an amazing book. Undoubtedly my favourite one. It changes the way you feel and think about life and people. /Maria Emilia, 18, Argentina The best book I ever read. The style of prose and the in-dept almost prophetic look on life as it is has left a deep mark on the way I look at life. After reading this one every new day will be different than before. /Leo, 43, Netherlands I liked it because it provoked my deepest fears of my potential behavior in the world that suddenly goes blind. It made me ask questions how I would react in those humiliating circumstances where survival instinct is dominant. Would my sweet Self that I know now become a selfish and unsophistacted human because of that I am locked up in a ward where everyone is blind, hungry and living without hope? /Tatjana, 34, Serbia & Montenegro An incredibly clever plot to show how people act in extreme situations. /Nadia Kamolz, 63, Germany I think that 'Blindness' is a great book; you could never guess what would happen next. I really liked the way that he was able to keep names, dates, and places anonymous, using adjectives rather than nouns to identify the characters. The science fiction twist he put in the story made his story the more interesting to read. Saramago describes this contagious blindness to be white and milky rather than the darkness that we portray it to be. This story can teach us that we can do things far beyond what we think we're capable of. /Abel, 17, United States A remarkable use of a human condition as metaphor; beautiful simple direct style coupled with strong characters set against a faceless, nameless power structure, Saramago's work is a wonderful display of the reality of the little things that mkae us truly human, and so rise above ourselves. /Brandy Bartosh, 44, United States This book shows what the human being is capable of doing to save his/her life. Also it reflects all the misery that can exist inside a person. It is impossible to stop reading it after it caught your attention. /Jose R Perez, 46, Colombia Well, it's one of the best books of the latter 20th century. /E. Welch, 20, United States If Gabriel Garcia Marquez's 'Love in the Time of Cholera' is a book ALL lovers MUST read, then Jose Saramago's 'Blindness' is a book ALL living things MUST read. There are comments that say that this book is "one that is unafraid to face all of the horrors of the century", and "a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century". They are diminishing this work. This does not just concern the 20th century, but it covers the time since any form of life was born. I wonder why no director/producer has made an attempt to make this into a movie yet. It will be an instant winner at any film festival. This novel is too grand to deserve any comment by readers. I am very disappointed that there are actually readers who could not follow the prose and dialogue. Wouldn't Gao Xingjian's 'Soul Mountain' and 'One Man's Bible' become utter rubbish in this case? [PLease do not read further if you have not read this book.] I couldn't quite understand though why the author used the church and its images in the finale. Is this implying that christianity, or rather religion, is a cause for our 'blindness'? /Teo Chee Tat, 24, Singapore It takes you into a city in which you can see the world today. The first blind person is called "The man who became blind at first" and the other people do not have names either. It is in such a situation which murder, rape and massacre are done. You can easily conclude that this is our own world. In every line of the novel, the beauty of narration forces you to wide open your eyes and never put the book away. /Soroosh, 16, Iran Saramago's beautiful, lyrical prose kept me reading for hours. This story is so hauntingly possible ... a true masterpiece! /Jeremy, 14, United States Because it tells you who low a human being can go. It's a real life lesson ... /Carlos Serra, 20, Portugal His style is grateful. He shows that the most people are greedy and dumb. But there are also some people, who keep their human qualities. /Sven Ullmann, 21, Switzerland We have a saying: In a land where there are only blind people, the one who has an eye is the king. Saramago shows in his book that we are wrong: the one who has an eye is a slave! Read it and you will know why ... It is frightening and very symbolic, a classic and yet so prosaic - really worth a Nobel Prize! Recommended for those who enjoy thrilling and thought-provoking books. /Nicolle Queiroz, 19, Brazil This book is a very nice history that shows us that human beings can easily be manipulated. Suddenly, everybody becomes blind, in this world a person who has eyes is king! /Marcos Paulo Salavracos, 16, Brazil It made me appreciate life more and all the things that surround us to make our life easier. Metaphorically, It also shows how blind humans are right now, and how they might not learn from their mistakes (history shows it) but in the book there is a light hope ... I just could not stop reading. /Ruth, 23, Ecuador

The Duplicated Man (El hombre duplicado)	This book is very attractive to the reader because the story is very interesting. I think that it is a book like the films of Hitchcock. All his books are interesting but this is truly wonderful! /Fernando Miguel Santos, 15, Portugal

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo)	I am a Catholic and I have heard a lot of bad things about this book so I naturally decided to read it ... And I am proud of my choice because this book is a masterpiece! I think it is, at first, a fable about our relations with God: the fear, the love, the refusal, the powerless of humans ... but it's mainly a fable about our relations about the authority in every way. I love this novel too because I've understood that we can do a lot of pain just for an ideal (an ideal of love for example) and that we have to accept our human condition to elevate ourselves to holiness like Jesus has done in the book. Thank you Mr. Saramago! /Bertrand, 17, Belgium

Quasi Objects (Objecto quase)	Great deconstruction of Portuguese language, chosen themes for each short story in the borderline of reality, fiction and "what if". /João Antonio Bomfim, 28, Brazil

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