THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO JESUS CHRIST

New York City, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1994. First Edition. First Printing.. Hardcover. Fine/Fine Dust Jacket.. New York City, NY: Harcourt Brace, 1994. Hardcover. Fine/Fine. First Edition/First Printing. 377 pages. The author's third novel to be translated into English. Widely considered Jose Saramago's greatest novel. The first appearance of the title in English and in the United States. Precedes and should not be confused with all other subsequent editions. Published in a small and limited first print run as a hardcover original only. The First Edition is now scarce. Presents Jose Saramago's "O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo" in a felicitous English translation. The most irreverent yet at the same time, also the most moving re-telling of the story of Jesus. Saramago's irony is deployed in a novel that amounts to a "re-write" of The Gospels, the latter being, in his view, invented works of fiction (they were all written hundreds of years after Jesus of Nazareth died). Saramago's novel provoked an outcry in Roman Catholic Portugal. It was debated in Parliament and withdrawn from consideration for the European Literature Prize. The controversy hurt Saramago deeply. He moved to the island of Lanzarote permanently, which explains why he was absent on the world stage at the peak of his fame. Saramago's Gospel is closely linked with all of his oeuvre, acutely so with his late, post-Nobel Prize work. Often described as a satirist, Saramago's work goes much deeper, and he is perhaps the greatest literary ironist since Franz Kafka. Saramago's novel is infinitely superior to say, Norman Mailer's "The Gospel According To The Son" (1999) partly because he writes as someone steeped in Catholic culture, and also because he is a much greater writer than Mailer could ever be. Saramago was an anomaly who came out of nowhere, seemingly born a genius. Every single page of every single book he has ever written makes the reader feel that he or she is in the hands of an unsurpassable Master. An absolute "must-have" title for Jose Saramago collectors. This copy is very prominently and beautifully signed in black pen on the title page by Jose Saramago. It is signed directly on the page itself, not on a tipped-in page. This title is a great book. This is one of few such signed copies of the First Hardcover Edition/First Printing (American) still available online and is in fine condition overall: Clean, crisp, and bright. Please note: Among Nobel Laureates, Saramago's signature was the most difficult to get because he rarely left Lanzarote, the island he moved to at the height of his fame. Signed copies of his books remain under-priced as compared to those of Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Cormac McCarthy. Saramago will be regarded by posterity as a greater writer than both of them, and there is no British or American novelist of the last fifty years, living or dead, who comes close to Saramago's achievement. A rare signed copy thus. Regarded by Harold Bloom as one of the two greatest novelists of our time (the other being Philip Roth), Jose Saramago will be read as probably the greatest European novelist of the last fifty years. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. A fine collectible copy. (SEE ALSO OTHER JOSE SARAMAGO TITLES IN OUR CATALOG). ISBN 0151367000.