José Saramago’s Childhood Memoir Inspires Companion Picture Books

Early in José Saramago’s 2006 memoir, “Small Memories,” he tells readers that he briefly considered calling it “The Book of Temptations” instead. His reasons were characteristically elliptical and charming: something about Bosch, and sainthood, and the fat prostitute who “in a weary, indifferent voice” invited a 12-year-old Saramago up to her room. (He doesn’t report his answer, but given how candid the book is elsewhere, it’s safe to assume he declined.) In the end, though, he decided that the title “Small Memories” better suited the book’s contents: “nothing of great note,” in Saramago’s estimation; simply “the small memories of when I was small.”

But for a great writer, of course, there are no small moments, and Saramago (1922-2010) was one of the best. Celebrated for spare, allegorical novels including “Blindness,” “All the Names” and ”Death With Interruptions,” he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, in 1998, and remains the only Portuguese author ever to have done so.

Saramago’s memoir, which appeared in English translation the year before he died, is a winsome look back at his coming-of-age in the small village of Azinhaga and later in Lisbon.

With its mix of peasant life, boyhood adventure and wide-eyed wonder, it makes perfect fodder for a couple of new picture books: “The Silence of Water,” illustrated by Yolanda Mosquera and translated (like “Small Memories”) by Margaret Jull Costa, and the forthcoming “An Unexpected Light,” illustrated by Armando Fonseca and again translated by Costa.