In the craft of the sentence, José Saramago is one of the great originals... no one writes quite like Saramago, so solicitous and yet so magnificently free. He works as though cradling a thing of magic - Guardian

Saramago has a light, graceful, ironic touch... the paraphernalia of magical realism -- John Banville

The author's eccentric voice is as engaging as ever... a fitting cap to a body of work as playful as it is wise - Financial Times

With characteristic dry wit he proceeds to debunk the rosy romance of eternal life - The Times

A compelling work by a fine writer ... the unique Saramagoan style ... gives the impression of a thought experiment to which the writer is merely a catalyst. That impression is a carefully crafted one: true art conceals its art, wrote Ovid - New Statesman

José Saramago is one of the most important international writers of thelast 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.