Portuguese Nobel laureate predicts controversy as new novel goes on sale

Fri Mar 26

LISBON (AFP) - Portuguese Nobel laureate Jose Saramago's latest novel, a fable about a right-wing government's violent reaction to an election in which 83 percent of the votes cast are blank, went on sale with the author predicting the book would spark huge controversy.


"The whole political system is questioned. It would be very difficult for the book not to generate a scandal or not be accused of being provocative," he said in an interview published in newsweekly Visao.


The 81-year-old writer added he hoped "Essay on Lucidity" would inspire disgruntled voters around the world to cast blank votes to show their disappointment instead of just staying away from the ballot box.


"I would like to know how a so-called democratic system would hold up if a majority of people somewhere, in Europe, decided to cast blank votes," he said.


In the 329-page novel the central government reacts by declaring a state of emergency and building a wall around the capital city while police use lie-detector machines in their hunt for voters who cast blank ballots.


Saramago's Portuguese publishers, Caminho, said the book will have a first print run of 100,000 copies, a record for a Portuguese novel.


First editions of Portuguese books usually total just 5,000 copies but sales of Saramago's works have soared both at home and abroad since he became the first Portuguese author to win a Nobel prize for literature in 1998.


A Spanish-language edition of Saramago's new book will become available in April with an Italian translation expected to hit bookstores later this year.


His books, which have become increasingly more politicized since he published "Blindness" in 1995, have been published in more than 30 languages, from Turkey to Thailand.


"I write to understand. I continue to make an effort to understand," he said in an interview published in daily newspaper Diario de Noticias.


"Especially since 'Blindness' there is an effort to reflect on the situation of the world, the individual and his responsibilities."


Born to poor parents in a farming town outside Lisbon in 1922, Saramago was raised in the Portuguese capital where he worked mainly as a journalist until a bloodless coup in 1974 put an end to a repressive right-wing dictatorship which had ruled Portugal for nearly five decades.


His literary career did not take off until the publication in 1982, when Saramago was 60, of "Baltasar and Blimunda", a historical love story set in 17th-century Portugal.


Saramago has not shied away from taking controversial positions in his books in the past.


The author, a self-proclaimed atheist, moved to Spain's Canary Islands off the coast of Morocco several years ago after a right-wing Portuguese minister of culture attempted to keep his novel "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" off the list of contestants for the 1992 European Literature Prize.


The minister contended the book, which contains a scene where Jesus loses his virginity, was blasphemous.


"The Stone Raft", published in 1986, meanwhile displayed Saramago's mistrust of the European Union (news - web sites).


The book shows what happens to Spain and Portugal after the two countries, which joined the EU the same year the book hit bookstores, break off from the rest of Europe and drift out into the Atlantic Ocean.

Saramago will officially launch "Essay on Lucidity" in Lisbon on Monday.

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