Description:
Published for the very first time, an early novel by Nobel laureate and literary master José Saramago that tells the intertwined stories of the residents of a faded Lisbon apartment building in the late 1940s.
Brief description:
JOSÉ SARAMAGO (1922-2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Review Quotes:
"Fluid and imaginative...[Skylight] is a masterly creation: pessimistic without being bleak, lyrical without being sentimental...Brilliantly structured, the novel contains moments of extraordinary poignancy...[Saramago] shows humanity at its most anxious, its most vulnerable and most true." --The Independent (UK) "Not only does [Skylight] illuminate the slow development of a radically original artist, but it is an interesting novel in its own right...The explicit sexuality of the book (which may have kept it from being considered for publication in Salazar's Portugal in 1953) is remarkable now only because it is so compassionate...Moving from character to character, the loosely plotted story includes a good deal of mean-spirited evildoing, quite in the tradition of Balzac and the naturalists. It also includes dry humour, and at least one tranquil domestic scene revealed suddenly as almost visionary." --The Guardian (UK) "Compelling...[Skylight] is shot through with more than enough flashes of brilliance to justify it seeing the light of day." --The National (UAE)