“The Widow” by José Saramago: the first love of a Nobel Prize winner for literature

In France, we had not yet read everything by José Saramago. Today we discover the first novel by a writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998: The Widow, published in 1947. At the time, José Saramago was a young clerk in the administrative departments of civil hospitals in Lisbon. By the greatest chance, a publisher publishes it, on the condition that he waives payment of copyright and agrees to change the title to Land of Sin. According to Saramago’s memory, the future held “nothing very famous” for him.

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