From his childhood in Azinhaga to his consecration in Stockholm, The 7 Lives of José Saramago attempts to portray the life of a man deeply committed to the craft of writing, dedicated to a transcendent mission. Anchored in the Josephville that the writer described in 1968, Miguel Real and Filomena Oliveira simultaneously tell the story of José Saramago and of another 20th-century Portuguese world.

A poor boy in a hostile Lisbon, from which he felt excluded in every aspect, decides to conquer the city, tear down its walls, and make it his own. He becomes a locksmith and self-taught, a writer, and finds ways to occupy the social, cultural, and political space that will allow him to carry out the revolution he envisioned and stubbornly believes in, leading him to create monumental works such as Memorial do Convento, O Evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo, and Ensaio sobre a Cegueira. From 1922 to 1998, the year he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, Saramago sees his longed-for Josephville transform into a world that celebrates him and his work.

Throughout the seven chapters that describe the different moments in the writer's life, we discover a Saramago who reinvents himself with each setback, who challenges the image the country has of itself, and who fearlessly confronts his worst fears. Written with full access to the Saramago Foundation's archives and containing previously unpublished testimonies, this is the intimate biography of a universal man, forged in the idealism of a more just world and committed to changing it through literature.

| Companhia das Letras / Paperback / 752 pp. / 148 x 228 x 52 mm |