Annotation
Even as it weathers financial storms, this publisher continues putting out works by the great Portuguese Nobel prize winner that have not yet been translated, and we can only be grateful. This latest, a City of Lisbon prize winner published in 1980, just before Saramago made his name with Baltasar and Blimunda, offers the authors classic understanding of the personal through larger historical forces. Like his own grandparents, members of the peasant Mau Tempo family work the land they dont own in southern Portugal, which is dominated by huge agricultural estates. Even as he details their daily lives, Saramago shows us the coming of the republic of Portugal, two world wars, the attempted assassination of Salazar, and, finally, the one thing that does change the rhythm of the Mau Tempos lives, the rise of communism.
| Genre | Fiction Historical Domestic |
| Topics | Multigenerational Family History Dictators Agriculture Poetry |
| Setting | Portugal |