«"Often, human beings are islands, part of a common archipelago – humanity – but they don't build the necessary bridges for communication and thus let time pass, from solitude to solitude. José Saramago didn't have this problem: he arrived in Lanzarote and met Fernando Gómez Aguilera, that is, he found the possibility of conversation and never felt alone. For sixteen years, Fernando Gómez Aguilera was his interlocutor, the person in whom the Portuguese writer firmly placed his trust, with satisfaction, always in friendship. This book is proof that José Saramago and Fernando Gómez Aguilera were never islands and also that the island of Lanzarote, through the constructive intervention of both, is a populated continent in the reading experience of many men and women around the world."»

From the Prologue of Pilar del Río

In The Bird That Chirps Perched on the Rhinoceros, Fernando Gómez Aguilera presents not only his readings of books written by José Saramago in Lanzarote, but also numerous unpublished texts that highlight the long and productive literary career of the Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate in Literature.

Porto Editora / Paperback / 344 pp. / 142 x 210 x 21 mm |