“An engaging, impressive and moving literary novel.The density and poise of its descriptions of Lisbon in 1936 recall Flaubert’s description of Paris in 1848 or Joyce’s Dublin in 1904. Full of precisely observed physical, historical and political details and themes, and rich psychology.” — Richard Locke, Wall Street Journal
“A rare, old-fashioned novel – at once lyrical, symbolic and meditative — by one of Europe’s major writers who deserves to be better known.” — Herbert Mitgang, New York Times
Lisbon 1936. Ricardo Reis, a doctor, has returned to his native Portugal after sixteen years in Brazil. But what kind of doctor is he? Instead of receiving patients in an office, he spends hours walking the steep rain-swept streets, reciting poetry to himself. Maybe the poetry is his own, maybe it is that of the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa: Pessoa sometimes accompanies him on his walks, or sits with him at a restaurant table discussing world events over an open newspaper. He still wears the suit in which he was buried a few weeks earlier.
In Ricardo Reis Saramago has created one of the most enigmatic characters in modern fiction, a man in touch with every facet of life at a moment in history when every certainty in civilised society is about to be scattered to the winds.
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