The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (in Portuguese: O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis) is a 1984 novel by Portuguese novelist José Saramago, the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in literature. It tells the story of the final year in the life of the title character, Ricardo Reis, one of the many heteronyms used by the Portuguese writer Fernando Pessoa.
In the novel, Ricardo Reis returns to Lisbon from Brazil, upon receiving word of Pessoa's death. While there, he chooses not to resume his practice of medicine, but rather takes up residence in a hotel where he wastes his days reading newspapers and wandering the streets of Lisbon.
The novel was translated into English in 1993 and won the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.
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Famous quotes containing the words year and/or death:
“You have been here only a short time, Mr. Barnard. You cannot know what it is to live here month upon month, year after year, breathing this infernal air, absorbing the miasma of barbarity that permeates these walls, especially this chamber.”
—Richard Matheson (b. 1926)
“if thou slip thy troth and do not come at all.
As minutes in the clock do strike so call for death I shall:
To please both thy false heart, and rid myself from woe,
That rather had to die in troth than live forsaken so.”
—Unknown. The Lady Prayeth the Return of Her Lover Abiding on the Seas (l. 19–22)