In the pages of this young adult novel by Nobel laureate José Saramago, the everyday lives of the residents of a working-class apartment building in Lisbon during the 1950s are depicted.
Portraits of people and family relationships, professions, habits, and customs from another era, when the privileged occupied the lower floors while the financially weaker lived high up, forced to climb up and down the stairs.
The writing, themes, and obsessions of the author as we know him from his mature works are present in a scattered way in this book-apartment with its chapter-apartments, while a flirtation of the author with some psychoanalytical ideas, which do not seem to interest him in his later work, stands out.
A novel with strong autobiographical elements - a necessary stop for those who loved the work of the great Portuguese author.
