Journey to Portugal (1981)

Crossing his native land from northeast to southwest, the great novelist explores the villages and towns of Portugal and discovers what it is that binds him to his country and his people. Climbing into his aged motor, Jose Saramago's trip across Portugal is a voyage of discovery about his own land. His attention to all he sees is meticulous, whether it be a cobweb-ridden chapel or a grand urban mansion, and each unlocks a thousand memories - of kings, warriors, painters, explorers, writers, saints and sinners. What unites his observations is Saramago's distinctive character as a travelling companion: whether genial after a glass of wine and a drive through misty mountains, or tetchy at being greeted in English by an Algarve hotelier, he is invariably delightful and stimulating company.

Baltasar and Blimunda (1982)

Portugal, 1711. In the midst of the terrors of the Inquisition and the plague, a seemingly mismatched couple discovers the wonders of love. This rich, irreverent tale, full of magic and adventure and graced with extraordinary historical detail, is a tapestry of human folly and human will.

The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984)

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.

The Stone Raft (1986)

When the Iberian Peninsula breaks free of Europe and begins to drift across the North Atlantic, five people are drawn together on the newly formed island-first by surreal events and then by love.

The History of the Siege of Lisbon (1989)

Raimundo Silva, an innocuous bachelor and proofreader, one day takes it upon himself to alter a key word in a history text. His revision changes a signal episode in Portuguese history and leads him into an affair of the heart that dictates an entire rewriting of history into a grand historical romance. Saramago constructs an ambitious tale around this episode, invoking broader mediations on historiography, the uses and abuses of language, and life under authoritarian rule.

The Gospel According To Jesus Christ (1991)

This is a skeptic's journey into the meaning of God and of human existence. At once an ironic rendering of the life of Christ and a beautiful novel, Saramago's tale has sparked intense discussion about the meaning of Christianity and the Church as an institution.

Blindness (1995)

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears - through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing.

An absolutely superb novel, and a good introduction to Saramago's style.

All The Names (1997)

Senhor Jos‚ is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily preoccupations. In the evenings and on weekends, he works on bringing up to date his clipping file of the famous, the rising stars, the notorious. But when he comes across the birth certificate of an anonymous young woman, he decides that this cannot have been mere chance, that he has to discover more about her.

The Tale of the Unknown Island (1999)

A man went to knock at the king's door and said to him, Give me a boat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting by the door for favors (favors being done to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking on the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear . . ." Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him the reader will discover as this short narrative unfolds.