José Saramago 
The Lives of Things 

Combining bitter satire, outrageous parody and uncanny hallucinations, this collection of Jos� Saramago’s earliest stories from the beginning of his writing career attests to the novelist’s imaginative power and incomparable skill in elaborating the most extravagant fantasies. Each tale is a wicked, surreal take on life under dictatorship: in ‘Embargo’ a man drives around a city that is slowly running out of petrol; ‘The Chair’ recounts what happens when dictator Salazar falls off his chair and dies; in the Kafkaesque ‘Things’ the life of a civil servant is threatened as objects start to go missing.

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Giovanni Pontiero (1932-1996) was the ablest translator of twentieth century literature in Portuguese and one of its most ardent advocates. He was the principal translator into English of the works of Jos� Saramago and was awarded the Teixeira-Gomes Prize for his translation of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.