SOURCE: A review of O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, in World Literature Today, Vol. 60, No. 2, Spring, 1986, p. 297.

[In the following review, Stern examines O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis, finding the novel a fitting tribute to Fernando Pessoa, a hero of the Portuguese revolution.]

Saramago once again melds fantasy and reality to produce a truly marvelous novel based on Fernando Pessoa's heteronym Ricardo Reis. In O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis (The Year of Ricardo Reis's Death) Reis returns to Portugal from Brazil upon learning of Pessoa's death. It is Portugal of the midthirties, and the backdrop is that decade's events: the entrenchment of the Salazar regime, the incipient Spanish Civil War, the rise of Hitler and Mussolini, all within the global-view style reminiscent of John Dos Passos's fiction. Pessoa's ghost appears to greet his "fellow poet" and eventually to "absorb" him.

Reis's odes...