A hollow mandate.(Ensaio sobre a Lucidez)(Book Review)

From: Foreign Policy | Date: November 1, 2004| Author: | Copyright information

Ensaio sobre a Lucidez (Essay on Lucidity) By Jose Saramago 330 pages, Lisbon: Editorial Caminho, 2004 (in Portuguese)

Suppose they gave a democracy and nobody came? Not an unreasonable question, given the dismal voter turnout in the recent elections for the European Parliament. It's a conundrum well suited to Portuguese writer Jose Saramago, who has made a career skewering the pretensions of Western politics. Saramago, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize ha literature, is a self-described "libertarian communist." Yet, he has always defied the expectations created by that ...

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