Raised from the Ground

A family of Portuguese farmers struggle to survive as world events pass them by in “a novel that resounds with relevance for our own time” (New York Times Book Review).

Winner of the City of Lisbon Prize

Celebrated author Jose Saramago has delighted readers around the world with his imaginative tales and evocative depictions of life in his native Portugal. His novel Raised from the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau Tempo family—poor landless peasants not unlike Saramago’s own grandparents.

Set in Alentejo, a southern province of Portugal known for its vast agricultural estates, the novel charts the lives of the Mau Tempos as national and international events rumble on in the background—the coming of the republic in Portugal, the two world wars, and an attempt on the dictator Salazar’s life. Yet nothing really impinges on the grim reality of the farm laborers’ lives until the first communist stirrings.

Raised from the Ground is Saramago’s most deeply personal novel, the book in which he found the signature style and voice that would win him the Nobel Prize in Literature.