Where to Start with José Saramago: A Reading Guide

José Saramago (1922–2010) is the most significant Portuguese novelist of the twentieth century — a late bloomer who published his breakthrough work in his mid-fifties and continued writing major novels until his death at eighty-seven. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. His novels are philosophical parables — extended meditations on what happens to human society under extraordinary conditions — written in a distinctive prose style that uses almost no conventional punctuation and refuses to give its characters proper names. He is one of the most original and most morally serious novelists of the postwar era.

Where to Start: Blindness (1995)

The essential Saramago — and one of the great parables of the twentieth century. An unnamed city is suddenly afflicted by white blindness: an epidemic that spreads instantly on contact, turning the world white rather than dark. The government quarantines the blind in an abandoned asylum; the doctor’s wife, the only person in the city who has not gone blind, conceals her sight and leads a small group of survivors through the collapse of civic order. What happens in the asylum — how quickly human solidarity dissolves, how brutally power fills the vacuum — is Saramago’s most direct account of what lies beneath civilisation’s surface.

The novel is immediately accessible despite Saramago’s unconventional punctuation style, because its narrative drive is strong and its moral urgency is undeniable. Begin here.

Death with Interruptions (2005)

The most darkly comic Saramago — and an excellent alternative starting point for readers who find the grimness of Blindness too unrelenting. On the first day of the new year, people in a small country simply stop dying. What should be good news quickly becomes catastrophic: the old and terminally ill cannot be released, hospitals overflow, the church’s theology collapses, funeral companies go bankrupt, and organized crime finds a way to profit by smuggling the dying across the border. Then Death — who has been on strike — resumes work, but becomes fascinated by a cellist who refuses to receive his letter.

The novel is Saramago’s wittiest and his most accessible; its satirical account of social institutions faced with the impossible is among the funniest in contemporary fiction.

The Cave (2000)

A meditation on modernity and Plato’s allegory of the cave — one of Saramago’s most philosophical novels. Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, finds that the vast Centre (a commercial complex that supplies everything its residents need) no longer wants his pottery. As he, his daughter, and his son-in-law move into the Centre to live, workers discover beneath it an actual cave containing human figures chained to a wall — the literal embodiment of Plato’s image. The novel is Saramago’s most sustained critique of consumer society and its substitution of simulacra for reality.

The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991)

Saramago’s most controversial novel — and the one that drove him into exile in the Canary Islands after the Portuguese government objected to it. The novel retells the life of Jesus from the perspective of Jesus himself: a fully human figure who falls in love with Mary Magdalene, is haunted by the guilt of his father Joseph’s sin, and is manipulated by God (a cold, totalitarian figure) into a role he cannot refuse. Saramago’s God is one of the most disturbing in literary fiction — a power that uses Jesus for his own purposes without concern for Jesus’s suffering. Deeply serious and formally controlled.

Why Blindness Is the Ideal First Book

For a reader new to José Saramago, the Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese novelist, Blindness is the ideal first book because it is his most famous and powerful novel and the fullest expression of his distinctive gifts, the bold allegorical premises, the distinctive flowing style, and the unflinching exploration of human nature and society. Blindness imagines a city struck by an epidemic of sudden blindness and the collapse of order that follows, in a harrowing, profound, and unforgettable allegory of human society and the human capacity for both cruelty and compassion. As an entry point it is ideal, for it is his best-known work and a perfect example of his allegorical, philosophically searching fiction. It welcomes the newcomer with its gripping premise, its profound themes, and its distinctive power, drawing the reader into his distinctive vision. It is his most famous work and a fine representation of his gifts, so the new reader encounters Saramago at his most characteristic. For the newcomer, then, Blindness is the natural and ideal starting point, on dark and harrowing subject matter.

What to Expect as a New Reader

As a new reader, you can expect Blindness to be a harrowing, profound, and unforgettable allegorical novel. You can expect a bold premise, for the novel imagines a city struck by an epidemic of sudden blindness. You can expect a collapse of order, for the novel explores the breakdown of society and the descent into cruelty, alongside acts of compassion. You can expect a distinctive style, for Saramago writes in long, flowing sentences with little conventional punctuation, an unusual but immersive technique. You can expect a profound allegory, for the blindness becomes a powerful metaphor for human society and the human condition. You can expect unflinching exploration of cruelty, dignity, and survival. You should be prepared for dark and disturbing material. Expect, in short, a harrowing, profound, and unforgettable allegorical novel, a powerful introduction to Saramago’s gifts.

Going Deeper After Your First Book

Once Blindness has introduced you to Saramago’s gifts, the reader who wishes to go deeper can explore his other novels, which continue his bold allegorical premises, his distinctive flowing style, and his unflinching exploration of human nature, society, and history. His other acclaimed works imagine such premises as death going on strike, a man who switches identities with his double, and a reimagining of biblical and historical stories, each marked by his allegorical imagination and his philosophical depth, and its sequel to Blindness returns to its world. Reading these after Blindness deepens your appreciation of Saramago’s distinctive gifts, the bold allegorical premises, the distinctive style, and the profound exploration of humanity. His characteristic qualities run through his work. Building your reading journey through Saramago is a matter of following his fiction from Blindness into his other novels. The reader who begins here and continues will encounter one of the most distinctive and profound novelists of recent times, and a Nobel laureate.

Reading José Saramago

Saramago’s novels require and reward patience: his punctuation style (long sentences, no quotation marks, descriptions rather than names) is initially disorienting but becomes natural after twenty or thirty pages, and once readers habituate to it, the prose reveals itself as highly controlled and deeply effective. Begin with Blindness; it is the most narratively driven and the most immediately accessible. Death with Interruptions is the most comic and the warmest; The Cave is the most philosophical; The Gospel According to Jesus Christ is the most challenging and the most theologically radical. All four reward the patience they require.