SOURCE: A review of Levantado do chao, in World Literature Today, Vol. 56, No. 1, Winter, 1982, p. 88.

[In the following review, Moser praises Saramago's intimate knowledge of his subject matter in Levantado do chao but ultimately finds the novel monotonous and redundant.]

Saramago is a rising star in Portuguese literature, still unnoticed abroad. This prizewinning novel [Levantado do chao] is his twelfth book since 1966. It deals with a familiar, emotion-laden subject, the losing battle of the small landholders and landless farmhands against the tentacular big estates in Portugal's dry and hot Alentejo, its only province where latifundia exist. The theme was a favorite with the neorealists and had been treated before in two memorable novels, Manuel da Fonseca's Seara de vento (1958) and the recent O pão não cai do céu by José R. Miguéis (1975/76; see WLT 55:4, p. 650).

Like Fonseca, Saramago knows the region intimately. Both draw...