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Zusatztext "For a first novel, though, this work displays a masterly grasp of wordplay and other literary devices, and as the translator points out, it can also serve as a map to the political and social themes of Saramago’s future novels ." -- Library Journal Informationen zum Autor JOSÉ SARAMAGO (1922–2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. Klappentext From the Nobel Prize winning author-a novel that takes us into the last days of Salazar's dictatorship when a second-rate artist is commissioned by a wealthy client to paint a portrait and the political and intellectual struggles that ensue. Manual of Painting and Calligraphy was José Saramago's first novel. Written eight years before the critically acclaimed Baltasar and Blimunda, it is a story of self-discovery set against the background of the last years of Salazar's dictatorship. A struggling young artist, commissioned to paint a portrait of an influential industrialist, learns in the process about himself and the world around him. The brilliant juxtaposition of a passionate love story and the crisis of a nation foreshadows all of Saramago's major works. A must-have for any devotee of the great Portuguese Nobel laureate, Manual of Painting and Calligraphy is now available in the United States. "Taut and compelling." - Los Angeles Times Book Review "Beautifully realized, heartbreakingly honest." - Providence Journal-Bulletin "Almost impossible to put down." - Austin American-Statesman Leseprobe On revient de loin. La formation bourgeoise, l’orgueil intellectuel. La nécessité de se réviser à tout moment. Les liens qui subsistent. La sentimentalité. L’empoisonnement de la culture orientée. —?Paul Vaillant-Couturier I shall go on painting the second picture but I know it will never be finished. I have tried without success and there is no clearer proof of my failure and frustration than this sheet of paper on which I am starting to write. Sooner or later I shall move from the first picture to the second and then turn to my writing, or I shall skip the intermediate stage or stop in the middle of a word to apply another brushstroke to the portrait commissioned by S. or to that other portrait alongside it which S. will never see. When that day comes I shall know no more than I know today (namely, that both pictures are worthless). But I shall be able to decide whether I was right to allow myself to be tempted by a form of expression which is not mine, although this same temptation may mean in the end that the form of expression I have been using as carefully as if I were following the fixed rules of some manual was not mine either. For the moment I prefer not to think about what I shall do if this writing comes to nothing; if, from now on, my white canvases and blank sheets of paper become a world orbiting thousands of light-years away where I shall not be able to leave the slightest trace. If, in a word, it was dishonest to pick up a brush or pen or if, once more in a word (the first time I did not succeed), I must deny myself the right to communicate or express myself, because I shall have tried and failed and there will be no further opportunities. My clients appreciate me as a painter. No one else. The critics used to say (during the brief period many years ago when they still discussed my work) that I am at least fifty years behind the times, which, strictly speaking, means that I am in that larval state between conception and birth: a fragile and precarious human hypothesis, a bitter and ironic interrogation as to what awaits me. “Unborn.” I have sometimes paused to reflect on this situation, which, transitory for most people, has become definiti...
