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An outstanding collection of award-winning books and authors Santillana USA has compiled a selection of the most popular books in Spanish under the Alfaguara imprint. The world-renowned authors cover a range of genres including novels, short stories, anthologies, and poetry.

Exquisitely written, this short story is a delicious introduction to Saramago's work. In an imaginary kingdom, a persistent man requests that the king grant him a ship. If he has his wish fulfilled, the man will sail in search of the unknown island of his dreams.

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

José Saramago was born on November 16, 1922. He spent most of his childhood on his parent's farm, except while attending school in Lisbon. Before devoting himself exclusively to writing novels in 1976, he worked as a draftsman, a publisher's reader, an editor, translator, and political commentator for Diario de Lisboa.

He is indisputably Portugal's best-known literary figure and his books have been translated into more than 25 languages. Although he wrote his first novel in 1947, he waited some 35 years before winning critical acclaim for work such as the Memorial do Convento. His works include The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and Blindness.

At age 75, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 for his work in which "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony, continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality." He died from a prolonged illness that caused multiple organ failure on June 18, 2010 at the age of 87.

(Bowker Author Biography)