BOOKPATHS

Portugal

Maya Jaggi talks with José Saramago.

For Saramago, democracy was in need of regeneration, since economic power determines political power. ‘I'm doubtful of democracy,’ he says. ‘Participation in political life is insufficient. People are called in every four years, and in between, the government does what it wants. That's not specific to Portugal.’ Yet even he is heartened by Barack Obama's election. ‘It's a beautiful moment, democracy in action, when millions were mobilised - including people who had never voted before - for a new candidate, and a black candidate at that. It's a kind of revolution.’ – from “New Ways of Seeing,” by Maya Jaggi, The Guardian

Portugal

Michael Kimmelman writes about the controversy surrounding letters written by poet Fernando Pessoa.

The elderly heirs of Fernando Pessoa, the exalted Portuguese writer, plan this fall to auction Pessoa’s correspondence with Aleister Crowley, the early-20th-century British mystic, mountaineer, writer and practitioner of black magic. Portugal’s culture minister is among those who have shown distress in recent days about the letters’ leaving the country. – from “Portugal Holds on to Words Few Can Grasp,” by Michael Kimmelman, The New York Times

Portugal

Boyd Tonkin talks with Richard Zimler, whose novel, The Last Kabbalist of Lisbon,” “stormed the bestseller lists in two continents.”

“Instead of dogma and diktat, of talking the talk, Zimler's Judaism depends on walking the walk: on being a proper mensch. ‘A mensch is someone who does the right thing: the generous thing, the unselfish thing, the caring thing, the world-saving thing,’ he says. ‘That's my Judaism. It's not a tribal religion for me.’" – from “Richard Zimler: In Search of the Silenced,” by Boyd Tonkin, The Independent