Manual of Painting and Calligraphy. A Novel.

First edition in English. 8vo. Pp. ix-[xii], 223, [3 (blank)]. Translator's Foreword. Publisher's black cloth, lettered in gilt to spine. Jacket design by Stephen Raw. Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero. Originally published in 1976 as Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia by Moraes Editores, Lisbon.

Signed by Author to title page. A touch of sunning to dustwrapper spine, else Fine.

Saramago's uncommon second novel and his first to appear in English. A struggling young artist commissioned to paint the portrait of a wealthy client at the fag-end of Salazar's dictatorship, struggles to capture the sitter's likeness while acknowledging his own artistic limitations. Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. "[T]his work displays a masterly grasp of wordplay and other literary devices, and as the translator points out, it can also serve as a map to the political and social themes of Saramago's future novels." –Library Journal