Small Memories
A Memoir
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
The Nobel Prize–winning author of Blindness recalls the days of his youth in Lisbon and the Portuguese countryside in this charming memoir.
José Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young José. Small Memories traces the formation of a man who emerged, against all odds, as one of the world's most respected writers.
Shifting between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this mosaic of memories looks back into the author's boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the family's blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramago's early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read to poring over a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Molière.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Weaving together memories of his Portuguese childhood, Nobel Prize winner Saramago (1922 2010) presents a lyrical portrait of the artist as a young man. Born in the small village of Azinhaga and raised in Lisbon, Saramago recounts his early days not in the traditional linear fashion but as snippets of reminiscences that flow from one topic and time period to another. The days spent in Azinhaga, exploring the countryside with a child's keen eye for adventure and spending time in his maternal grandparents' cottage, are beautifully depicted and resonate even more deeply when Saramago describes the modernization that has made his boyhood home unrecognizable. Readers will also recognize the trademark undercurrent of wit in Saramago's stories, such as how a village joke resulted in his surname being recorded incorrectly on his birth certificate ("Saramago" means wild radish) and how an early attempt to master French was actually a childhood introduction to Moli re. Yet all is not merry as Saramago recalls the tragic death of his older brother, Francisco, at age four, which causes him to explore the concept of so-called "false memories," as well as his family's poverty. With its poetic style, this posthumous memoir is the perfect coda to Saramago's distinguished career.
