Skylight Paperback - 2015

Unmistakably Saramago . . . There is no shortage of wonders to be found in ["Skylight"]. "Washington Post" A fascinating and startlingly mature work . . . The book is a gem. "Boston Globe" Lisbon, late 1940s. The inhabitants of a faded apartment building are struggling to make ends meet: Silvio the cobbler and his wife take in a disaffected young lodger; Dona Lidia, a retired prostitute, is kept by a businessman with a roving eye. Humble salesman Emilio s Spanish wife is in a permanent rage; beautiful Claudinha s boss lusts for her; Justina and her womanizer husband live at war with each other. Happy marriages, abusive relationships, jealousy, gossip, love "Skylight" is a portrait of ordinary people painted by the master of the quotidian, a great observer of the immense beauty and profound hardship of the modern world. The gifted young Saramago makes these characters click together in a way that's extremely sympathetic. NPR, "All Things Considered" It was only a matter of time before a work of such extraordinary honesty and perception would make its way into the world. "San Francisco Chronicle" JOSE 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 in literature."