I love the work of Nobel laureate José Saramago and have already read a few of his books, not this one, though - his very first novel published posthumously because the editor to whom the author sent it didn't even bother to answer until decades later when Saramago won the Nobel Prize in Literature.

Find out more in the great review that went online here on the Read the Nobels blog past week!

Here's a recent review from Read the Nobels about a novel titled The Harafish. It's an interesting book from the pen of Naguib Mahfouz, the so far only Egyptian recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature. It's also Guiltless Reader's first contribution to the annual event Read the Nobels 2016, which is still open for sign-up, by the way.

»»» read also my review of Midaq Alley by Naguib Mahfouz.

For Europeans the desert is an intriguing place – very much like the High Seas, the Polar Regions and Outer Space. The Nobel laureate in literature of 2008, Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, dedicated one of his novels to the magic of the desert.

The impressive scenes of Desert are Morocco or Western Sahara and Marseille, France, alternately in 1909/10 and in modern times. The two plot lines are interlaced and linked in various ways. One such connection is the desert itself and the deep love for it which share the Tuareg teenager Nour and the poor orphan girl Lalla Hawa although about sixty years separate their stories. Another common point is the Blue Man, a wonder-working man of the Tuareg people and maternal ancestor of Lalla Hawa.

The stories of Nour and Lalla breathe the spirit of the Desert. They move about in a world of beauty and frugality, of secret and magic, of life and death which J.-M. G. Le Clézio describes in countless poetic pictures. The protagonists are fully aware of their surroundings and see things that nobody else, above all no European, might notice or even appreciate.

For the full review please click here to go to my blog Edith’s Miscellany.

Despite its title The History of the Siege of Lisbon doesn’t revolve around the proven historical facts of 1147, but they serve José Saramago only as background for a love story taking place eight centuries later.

Correcting the proofs of a history book Raimundo Benvindo Silva intentionally adds a minor mistake that reverses the meaning of a central sentence. When it is discovered the publishing house engages Dona Maria Sara to supervise all proofreaders. The encounter of the bachelor Raimundo Silva and the divorcee Maria Sara is the beginning of their hesitant love story. Encouraged by Maria Sara the proofreader sets out to write his own, alternative history of the siege of Lisbon. At the same time he courts Maria Sara, at first with much restraint because he can’t imagine the younger woman to be interested in him, but day by day they get closer.

For the full review please click here to go to my main book blog Edith’s Miscellany.

The History of the Siege of Lisbon - José Saramago,Giovanni Pontiero 
 

Abridged version of my review posted on Edith’s Miscellany on 17 January 2014

The Turkish novel Snow by the Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk is set in a winter of the 1990s when Ka, a middle-aged poet of small renown suffering from writer’s block, travels from his exile in Germany to the Eastern Anatolian town Kars. He wants to meet his adored former schoolmate İpek who has recently divorced her husband. At his arrival under heavy snowfalls Kars is cut off. The following three days are filled with courting beautiful İpek and with talking to military, police, Secret Service, secularists, communists, nationalists, moderate Islamists, and the wanted Islamic extremist Blue. Ka is drawn into the thicket of conflicting political convictions, but he is just a poet blindly in love who doesn’t take much notice of the violent coup de main that takes place in his presence. Poem after poem flows into his pen and into his green notebook. Then the snowfalls stop, traffic connections are cleared and the old order is restored. Ka and everybody else has to face the consequences of their actions.

The genesis of the poems together with Ka’s life story serve Orhan Pamuk as the perfect background to touch on the complex political and cultural situation in Turkey, a country between Asia and Europe, between Islamic heritage and western lifestyle, between tradition and modernism. It shows the dilemma of the Turkish people in search of a new identity which pleases followers of all the different ideological and religious movements present in the area, be it on the national or on the individual level. Orhan Pamuk’s language and style remain simple throughout and make it easy to follow the plot. The characters are described very carefully and with a certain degree of irony and playfulness.

All in all, I enjoyed Snow by Orhan Pamuk very much and I warmly recommend it both for its literary quality as well as for the glimpse into the Turkish soul which it allows.

For the full review please click here to go to my blog Edith’s Miscellany.