In November 1989 I went on honeymoon Cape Verde to , former Portuguese colony, an archipelago in the Atlantic. After arriving at the airport of Santa Maria do Sal nell'Ilha, we boarded to go to Santiago on a Focker scarrupatissimo among native chickens and festive. We landed safely in Praia, the capital, and were besieged by gangs of children and teenagers who demanded money, pens, shoes, everything. We ended up after a week Tarrafal, a tiny fishing village with a few huts on the beach and coral reef front. A paradise. In addition to our cabin there was a Portuguese and a French woman in the hut after. Four white on a white beach to fish, eat, laugh and talk for a whole month. We learned the fall of the Berlin Wall weeks later, we were out of touch. The Portuguese had a very nice guy that he was just reading a book by an author unknown to us. They said that the only Portuguese writer known in Italy at the time was Pessoa, Pessoa eccheddueppalle said. Laughed so much saying that there was this thing of being Pallosa Portuguese literature, but had to understand the Portuguese who have an eye to the Atlantic. We discussed at length on that one which has the vision of an ocean in front of us and only c'abbiamo the Mediterranean sea. He was very engrossed in his book, when finished it said it was a masterpiece and you know how are the stories of bibliophiles, we asked him who he was and what he told the writer. We made a long speech half Portuguese and half English on this brilliant writer (shenial that was nice to hear him in Portuguese) called Saramago and that was the greatest living writer and that book had a terrific plot. We had a beautiful spoiler under the palm trees and the wind Tarrafal and there seemed to be in Lisbon in the middle of the Crusades, during the siege. And we told the whole long story about a mistake, which is not a mistake, but just a choice of an editor who wants to change a book, but the story and eventually changes her life. Not interrupting anything, let alone believe that if someone in Italy would begin to translate contemporary Portuguese literature, and then we could have ever read the Siege Lisbon. Instead we found it translated a couple of years later. It is not a simple book to read and made me think so. What I've read twice. As soon as the siege ended, I thought that should give the Nobel Prize and when they finally assigned him, I was very happy, 'because he deserved it really. Saramago I read everything that was published afterwards. For me it remains one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century, so intense that I see the deep ocean of thought. All this to say that today is my favorite writer died and that I am sorry to think that I will not have his other new books to read and I'll read and reread the ones I miss you already and that he could live much longer and still others write beautiful books and short fuck. Mica to speak. Seriously.
