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Saramago, Jose (Translated by Giovanni Pontiero) : The Lives Of Things: Short Stories

Verso Books, London, England, 2012

ISBN 1844678784

First Edition / First Printing. Fine in Fine Dust Jacket. 165 pages. Collection of short stories, published posthumously. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United Kingdom. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original which sold out shortly after publication. It is one of Jose Saramago's earliest books, published in 1978, and now finally available in translation thirty-four years later. There is no American Edition. The First Edition is now rare. Presents Jose Saramago's "Objecto Quase" in a felicitous English translation. A magnanimous gesture from the Modern Master. "Combining bitter satire, outrageous parody, and uncanny hallucinations, this collection of Saramago's earliest stories attests to the novelist's imaginative power and incomparable skill in elaborating the most extravagant fantasies. Each tale is a wicked, surreal take on life under dictatorship: In 'Embargo', a man drives around a city that is slowly running out of petrol; 'The Chair' recounts what happens when dictator Salazar falls off his chair and dies; in the Kafkaesque 'Things', the life of a civil servant is threatened as objects start to go missing" (Publisher's blurb). "Saramago will be a permanent part of the Western canon. In all of his wonderful meditations upon the ruefulness of life, there is always a spirit of laughter beckoning us in the art of somehow going on. His achievement is one of the enlargements of life" (Harold Bloom). That is to say, more than any other great European writer of our time, he makes us laugh at his pain. "Arguably the greatest writer of our time. He throws a dazzling flash of lightning on his subjects" (The Chicago Tribune). Saramago was an anomaly who came out of nowhere, seemingly born a genius. Every single page of every single book he has ever written makes the reader feel that he or she is in the hands of an unsurpassable Master. An absolute "must-have" title for Jose Saramago collectors. This title is a late-modern classic. As far as we know, this is the only copy of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright, a pristine beauty. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A rare copy thus. Regarded by Harold Bloom as one of the two greatest novelists of our time (the other being Philip Roth), Jose Saramago will be read as probably the greatest European novelist of the last fifty years. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JOSE SARAMAGO TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 1844678784.

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