José Saramago no The New York Times

Among Nobel laureates of recent vintage, only Mario Vargas Llosa, who won the prize in literature last year, has delivered as much pure pleasure as the Portuguese novelist José Saramago. Saramago’s best books read like hallucinatory thrillers. They’re warm to the touch; they practically palpitate in your hands.

Saramago died last spring at 87. The book in front of us today is among his final compositions, a slim memoir of his youth titled “Small Memories.” It will not take a place among his major works. In fact — sometimes you must come right out and say these things — it’s mostly a vague and distracted book, one that provides the sensation of gazing on a dim and foggy day through the wrong end of a telescope.

Fundacao José Saramago.
The New York Times.