The Lives of Things

The Lives of Things

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A surreal short story collection from the master of what-ifs

Combining bitter satire, outrageous parody and uncanny hallucinations, this collection of José Saramago’s earliest stories from the beginning of his writing career attests to the novelist’s imaginative power and incomparable skill in elaborating the most extravagant fantasies. Each tale is a wicked, surreal take on life under dictatorship: in ‘Embargo’ a man drives around a city that is slowly running out of petrol; ‘The Chair’ recounts what happens when dictator Salazar falls off his chair and dies; in the Kafkaesque ‘Things’ the life of a civil servant is threatened as objects start to go missing.

Reviews

  • The most gifted novelist ... in the world today.

    Harold Bloom
  • Saramago is a writer, like Faulkner, so confident of his resources and ultimate destination that he can bring any improbability to life.

    John UpdikeNew Yorker
  • No one writes quite like Saramago, so solicitous and yet so magnificently free. He works as though cradling a thing of magic.

    Steven PooleGuardian