Book description
First published in 1980, Saramago's prizewinning novel Raised from
the Ground follows the changing fortunes of the Mau-Tempo family
- poor, landless peasants not unlike the author's own grandparents.
Set in Alentejo, a southern province of Portugal known for its vast
agricultural estates, Saramago 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 First and Second World Wars,
and an attempt on the dictator Salazar's life. Yet, nothing really
impinges on the grim reality of the farm labourers' lives until the
first communist stirrings.
Finally published for the first time in English, Raised from the
Ground is highly political yet full of Saramago's characteristic
humour and humanity, and his most autobiographical and deeply personal
novel. As full of love as it is of pain, it is a vivid, moving tribute
to the men and women among whom Saramago lived as a child, and a
fascinating insight into the early work of this literary giant.
José Saramago is one of the most important international writers of
the
last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922 in the small rural village
of Azinhaga, he was in his fifties when he came to prominence as a
writer with the publication of
Baltasar & Blimunda
. A huge body of work followed, which included plays, poetry, short
stories, non-fiction and over a dozen novels, translated into more than
forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. He died in June 2010.
