SEEING

New York City, NY: Harcourt, Inc. , 2006. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Harcourt, Inc. , 2006. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 307 pages. The author's tenth novel to be translated into English. One of Jose Saramago's finest achievements. The first appearance of the title in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Jose Saramago's "Ensaio sobre a Lucidez" in a felicitous English translation. Known simply as "Seeing", the sequel to "Blindness". The latter had an almost mythic power "whereas its sequel, a political satire set in the same nameless city, opens with more wit and less heart. When Election Day coincides with a terrible rainstorm, the government worries that no one will venture out to vote. This fear is unfounded, but the election results are even more alarming: 70% of the city's voters have cast a blank ballot. Saramago has enormous fun imagining the official acrobatics precipitated by this apparent vote of no-confidence, and as the political hypocrisies and bureaucratic absurdities multiply, the narrative hums with correspondences to current events. Initially, readers may miss the previous novel's intensity of feeling, but this one's lightness proves deceptive: For Saramago's beleaguered citizens, even thoughts never uttered can be fatal, and everyone is guilty until otherwise notified" (The New Yorker Magazine) . Saramago re-visits and re-examines "the human condition", that otherwise exhausted inheritance from the idea and the reality called Europe, and sees it with fresh eyes through the prism of Apocalypse/"The End". He revitalizes and enlarges the novel through allegory. Often described as a satirist, Saramago's work goes much deeper, and he is perhaps the greatest modern literary ironist since Franz Kafka. An important distinction: A satirist mocks, makes fun of, and laughs at others; an ironist mocks, makes fun of, and laughs at himself, that is, makes us laugh at his pain. "Arguably the greatest writer of our time. He throws a dazzling flash of lightning on his subjects" (The Chicago Tribune) . Saramago was an anomaly who came out of nowhere, seemingly born a genius. Every single page of every single book he has ever written makes the reader feel that he or she is in the hands of an unsurpassable Master. An absolute "must-have" title for Jose Saramago collectors. This title is a late-modern classic. This is one of few copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in especially fine condition: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Copies available online have serious flaws, are subsequent printings, or are remainder-marked. This is surely an accessible and lovely alternative. A scarce copy thus. Regarded by Harold Bloom as one of the two greatest novelists of our time (the other being Philip Roth) , Jose Saramago will be read as probably the greatest European novelist of the last fifty years. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. A fine copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JOSE SARAMAGO TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0151012385.