Skylight

Description

In 1953, Jose Saramago submitted a novel to his publishers. Thirty-six years later, he heard back Lisbon, late-1940s. The inhabitants of an old apartment block are struggling to make ends meet. There's the elderly shoemaker and his wife who take in a solitary young lodger; the woman who sells herself for money and jewellery; the cultivated family come down in the world; and the beautiful typist whose boss can't keep his eyes off her. Poisonous relationships, happy marriages, jealousy, gossip and love - Skylight brings together the joys and grief of ordinary people. One of his earliest novels, it provides an entry into Saramago's universe but was lost for decades and published, as per his wishes, after his death.

Jose Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922, he was in his sixties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago died in June 2010.

A fluid and imaginative translation by Margaret Jull Costa... A masterly creation: pessimistic without being bleak, lyrical without being sentimental... Saramago tears back that curtain to reveal not only the stage on which life is performed but also backstage, under unflattering working lights; to show humanity at its most anxious, its most vulnerable and most true -- James Runcie * Independent * For admirers of his work...the rescue of this novel from oblivion is something to be grateful for. The translator, Margaret Jull Costa, as ever, does a splendid job * Times Literary Supplement * Not only does it illuminate the slow development of a radically original artist, but it is an interesting novel in its own right -- Ursula Le Guin * The Guardian * This is one of Saramago's early works but his eye for psychological nuance and his gift for sympathy are already in evidence * New Statesman * Skylight is a deeply affecting novel, the work of an already adroit writer who marshals his characters with assurance * Evening Standard *