Synopses & Reviews
Josand#233; Saramago was eighteen months old when he moved from the village of Azinhaga with his father and mother to live in Lisbon. But he would return to the village throughout his childhood and adolescence to stay with his maternal grandparents, illiterate peasants in the eyes of the outside world, but a fount of knowledge, affection, and authority to young Josand#233;.and#160;
Shifting back and forth between childhood and his teenage years, between Azinhaga and Lisbon, this is a mosaic of memories, a simply told, affecting look back into the authorand#8217;s boyhood: the tragic death of his older brother at the age of four; his mother pawning the familyand#8217;s blankets every spring and buying them back in time for winter; his beloved grandparents bringing the weaker piglets into their bed on cold nights; and Saramagoand#8217;s early encounters with literature, from teaching himself to read by deciphering articles in the daily newspaper, to poring over an entertaining dialogue in a Portuguese-French conversation guide, not realizing that he was in fact reading a play by Moliand#232;re.and#160;
Written with Saramagoand#8217;s characteristic wit and honesty, Small Memories traces the formation of an artist fascinated by words and stories from an early age and who emerged, against all odds, as one of the worldand#8217;s most respected writers.
Review
"Peeling the Onion has that same imaginative accuracy that made The Tin Drum a bestseller." The Times (UK)
Review
"A riveting memoir....The command of incident and detail is superlative, and the book is immensely readable....[An] eloquent self-portrait." Kirkus Reviews
Synopsis
In this extraordinary memoir, Nobel Prizewinning author Gunter Grass remembers his early life, from his boyhood in a cramped two-room apartment in Danzig through the late 1950s, when
The Tin Drum was published.
During the Second World War, Grass volunteered for the submarine corps at the age of fifteen but was rejected; two years later, in 1944, he was instead drafted into the Waffen-SS. Taken prisoner by American forces as he was recovering from shrapnel wounds, he spent the final weeks of the war in an American POW camp. After the war, Grass resolved to become an artist and moved with his first wife to Paris, where he began to write the novel that would make him famous.
Full of the bravado of youth, the rubble of postwar Germany, the thrill of wild love affairs, and the exhilaration of Paris in the early fifties, Peeling the Onion which caused great controversy when it was published in Germany reveals Grass at his most intimate.
Synopsis
"One of Mr. Saramago's last books, and one of his most touching," (and#8212;NYT), this posthumous memoir of his childhood, written with characteristic wit and honesty, traces the formation of an individual into an artist, who emerged against all odds as one of the world's most respected writers.
About the Author
JOSandEacute; SARAMAGO (1922andndash;2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasarandnbsp;and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
MARGARET JULL COSTA has established herself as the premier translator of Portuguese literature into English today.
Table of Contents
Contents
Skins Beneath the Skin 1
Encapsulations 28
His Name Was Wedontdothat 64
How I Learned Fear 105
Guests at Table 160
At and Below the Surface 202
The Third Hunger 248
How I Became a Smoker 292 Berlin Air 344
While Cancer, Soundless 367
The Wedding Gifts I Received 395