Lives of Things

Combining bitter satire, outrageous parody and uncanny hallucinations, this collection of Jos� Saramago''s earliest stories from the beginning of his writing career attests to the novelist''s imaginative power and incomparable skill in elaborating the most extravagant fantasies. Each tale is a wicked, surreal take on life under dictatorship: in ''Embargo'' a man drives around a city that is slowly running out of petrol; ''The Chair'' recounts what happens when dictator Salazar falls off his chair and dies; in the Kafkaesque ''Things'' the life of a civil servant is threatened as objects start to go missing.