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Seeing
  • Published: 15 March 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784871772
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $34.99

Seeing

Formats & editions
EBook
20 Sept 2013
Paperback
15 Mar 2017
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What happens when voter apathy dismantles democracy altogether? Saramago's gripping novel investigates

Despite the heavy rain, the officer at Polling Station 14 finds it odd that by midday on National Election day, only a handful of voters have turned out. Puzzlement swiftly escalates to shock when the final count reveals seventy per cent of the votes are blank. National law decrees the election should be repeated but the result is even worse. The authorities, seized with panic, decamp from the capital and declare a state of emergency. When apathy and disillusionment renders an entire democratic system useless what happens next?
  • Published: 15 March 2017
  • ISBN: 9781784871772
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $34.99
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About the author

José Saramago

JOSÉ DE SOUSA SARAMAGO, (November 1922 - June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992, and co-founder with Orhan Pamuk, of the European Writers' Parliament (EWP).
portrait photo of José Saramago

Also by José Saramago

Cain
The Elephant's Journey
Small Memories
The First Boat
An Unexpected Light
The Silence of Water
The Lizard
See all

Praise for Seeing

He writes with wit, with heartbreaking dignity, and with the simplicity of a great artist in full control of his art. Let us listen to a true elder of our people, a man of tears, a man of wisdom

Ursula Le Guin, Guardian

The narrative voice is impressively uncompromising

Sarah Emily Miano, The Times

A brilliant, cruelly ironic, surreal exposé of what we think of as civil society

John Burnside, Scotland on Sunday

This is political satire delivered with rare intellectual gravitas

Mail on Sunday

Saramago portrays an instantly recognisable world in which our political masters bang on about democracy while pursuing policies without any regard to the normal standards of law and basic morality, but in this dense, dark and occasionally brutal book he never forgets the satirist's duty to be funny

Peter Parker, Sunday Times

A profound fable

New Statesman