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Fernanda Eberstadt has a lengthly of Jose Saramago in yesterday’s New York Times Magazine.

Not a lot about his fiction in this piece, but it does present a charming look at the octogenarian Nobel Prize winner, who, apparently, isn’t all that popular:

Yet Saramago also often appears to be disliked. In part this is the resentment of a country that has long been dominated by a small elite. In part, it is a matter of Saramago���Ĵ�ý�s own unaccommodating personality. Everywhere I went in Lisbon in June, people described him as ���Ĵ�ý�cold,���Ĵ�ý� ���Ĵ�ý�arrogant,���Ĵ�ý� ���Ĵ�ý�unsympathetic.���Ĵ�ý� When my interpreter inquired at a DVD store if a documentary about Saramago was in stock, the young salesman, startled by the request, replied, laughing, ���Ĵ�ý�I hope not!”