Boucquey Thierry (General Editor). Encyclopedia Of World Writers. 3 volumes
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elements of magic or mythology. Grimus, for in-
stance, sends its Native American protagonist,
Flapping Eagle, in search of his sister and involves
him with magicians, intelligent stone frogs, extra-
terrestrials, and a host of other fantastic devices.
In Midnight’s Children, political satire mixes
with Hindu fantasy and psychic abilities as it is re-
vealed that 1,001 children born at the stroke of
midnight on August 15, 1947, the day of Indian in-
dependence from Britain, gained such superpow-
ers as telepathy and telekinesis. Two of those
children, one wealthy and one poor, are switched at
birth, leading to political complications.
The Muslim Indian narrator, Saleem Sinai, says
he is “handcuffed to history,” the events of his life
“indissolubly chained to those of my country.”
Sinai’s psychic powers, says critic Dubravka Juraga,
enable him “to empathize with members of all seg-
ments of India’s complex, multilayered society,”
from a starving man to a rich man who bullies
serfs and even to real-life political figures such as
Prime Minister Nehru. Throughout the course of
the novel, Saleem struggles to retain his own iden-
tity. Scholar Michael Reder remarks, “as Saleem’s
story demonstrates, individuals can fall victim to a
discourse—such as a national myth—in which
they themselves are denied a role.” Individual iden-
tity is constrained by historical circumstances.
Shame, patterned after Gabriel
GARCÍA MÁR-
QUEZ’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, combines
Pakistani civil war with the fairy–tale-like story of
a little girl so wracked by shame that her blushes
can set objects on fire. An accusatory narrative
voice sometimes interrupts Rushdie’s main narra-
tion, demanding to know whether Rushdie is close
enough to Indian and Pakistani culture to tell this
tale: “We know you, with your foreign language
wrapped around you like a flag: speaking about us
in your forked tongue, what can you tell but lies?”
Critic Timothy Brennan calls this “Rushdie’s most
fully realized and densely crafted novel.”
In Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990) Rushdie
artfully blends references to The Thousand and
One Nights with Rushdie’s philosophy that reality
is open to many interpretations and his love of fic-
tion as a playground of the mind where countless
ideas, even heretical ones, can be displayed. It is the
story of a boy who hopes to rescue his father by
returning to him the gift of storytelling: “And be-
cause the stories were held here in liquid form,
they retained the ability to change, to become new
versions of themselves.” Rushdie and his characters
savor the ability to rework old tales and old beliefs.
Rushdie’s blending of different cultural influ-
ences has been a chief interest of his critics, who
have seen in him both a testament to the relevance
of tradition and folklore and a reminder that the
entire idea of nationhood is in some sense a fic-
tion, maintained by common beliefs and touch-
stone stories. Further, as critic Timothy Brennan
observes, by rewriting sacred stories with the imag-
ination and freedom of a fiction writer rather than
the ferocity of a heretic or adherent of a rival reli-
gion, Rushdie “unravels the religion from within.”
Scholar M. Keith Booker, in his introduction to a
collection of essays on Rushdie, writes that
“Rushdie has undoubtedly been one of the most
important writers in world literature in the past
quarter century . . . [and] a major commentator on
Indian and other postcolonial cultures.”
Other Works by Salman Rushdie
The Ground Beneath Her Feet. New York: Henry Holt,
1999.
The Moor’s Last Sigh. Thorndike, Maine: Chivers
Press, 1995.
Works about Salman Rushdie
Booker, M. Keith, ed. Critical Essays on Salman
Rushdie. New York: G. K. Hall, 1999.
Cundy, Catherine. Salman Rushdie. Manchester, U.K.:
Manchester University Press, 1996.
Harrison, James. Salman Rushdie. New York: Twayne,
1992.
Russian symbolism
See SYMBOLISM.
378 Russian symbolism
379
S
Saadawi, Nawal El
See SADAWI, NAWAL.
Sachs, Nelly Leonie (1891–1970) poet
Nelly Leonie Sachs was born in Berlin to Jewish
parents, William and Margarethe (Karger) Sachs.
Her father was a wealthy industrialist and inventor.
Sachs attended Hoch Toechterschule but received
most of her education privately. She developed an
early interest in dancing and literature and began
writing poetry and puppet plays as a teenager.
Sachs’s first volume of poetry Legenden und
Erzählungen (Legend and Tales, 1921) reflected her
interest in the common roots of Judaism and
Christianity. She was later influenced by German
and Jewish mysticism, including the writings of
Jakob Böhmne, and Hasidism. In the 1930s, Sachs
published her poetry in newspapers and Jewish
journals. With the help of friends, she escaped
from Nazi Germany to Sweden in 1940. Sachs
wrote her most significant poetry about the hor-
rors of World War II and the Nazi death camps;
these poems are included in volumes such as In
den Wohnungen des Todes (In the Habitations of
Death, 1946) and Sternverdunkelung (Eclipse of the
Stars, 1949) and earned her worldwide acclaim.
While in Sweden, Sachs also translated the works
of several Swedish poets, such as Erik Lindegren
and Johannes Edfelt, into German.
The primary theme of Sachs’s literary work is
the Holocaust. Critics have noted that her poems
elevated the Jews’ suffering to a cosmic plane.
Scholar Elisabeth Strenger writes in her essay
“Nelly Sachs and the Dance of Language,” that in
Sachs’s poems, “Jewish mystical voices cry out
over the uninitiated language of the German
oppressors.” Sachs includes deep religious feeling,
mourning, and elements of dance in her lan-
guage. Her work provides an important poetic
testimony to the Holocaust. She shared the Nobel
Prize for literature in 1966 with Samuel Joseph
AGNON.
Another Work by Nelly Sachs
The Seeker and Other Poems. Translated by Ruth
Mead, Matthew Mead, and Michael Hamburger.
New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1970.
A Work about Nelly Sachs
Bahti, Timothy, and Marilyn Sibley Fries. Jewish Writ-
ers, German Literature: The Uneasy Examples of
Nelly Sachs and Walter Benjamin. Ann Arbor: The
University of Michigan Press, 1995.
Sadawi, Nawal (al-Sa’dawi, El Saadawi)
(1931– ) essayist, memoirist, novelist
Nawal Sadawi has authored some of Arab femi-
nism’s landmark texts. Her indictment of female
genital mutilation in The Hidden Face of Eve is per-
haps the aspect of Sadawi’s work best known in the
West; the English translation rearranges the Arabic
text to begin with the author’s searing memory of
her clitorectomy at age six. Well known, too, are her
attacks on Islamic fundamentalism and theory of
ancient Egypt as originally matriarchal. Less well
known in translation, perhaps because it is less
palatable to her Western readership, is the fact that
Sadawi denounces the patriarchy of all three Near
Eastern religions—Islam, Christianity, and Judaism.
Her protest against U.S. and global capitalism’s ex-
ploitation of women in the developing world is an-
other important theme in her work, which tends to
be glossed over in English-language references in
favor of emphasis on her critiques of Arab sexual
morés. Sadawi’s travelogue, My Travels Around the
World (1992), which contains powerful condemna-
tion of Western imperialism, is out of print.
In her fiction, Sadawi’s protagonists are victim-
ized women, beaten by overwhelming male domi-
nation in a world devoid of female friendship and
male allies. In life, Sadawi earned her M.D. (1955)
at Cairo University in a climate made possible by
other Egyptian feminist men and women. Her par-
ents, of rural Egypt, supported her career choice.
In Memoirs of a Woman Doctor (1989) and other
works, Sadawi drew on her clinical experiences for
writing about women’s sexual oppression. Abor-
tion, honor killings, child molestation—Sadawi’s
indictment of patriarchy leaves no taboo unbro-
ken. Women and Sex (1971) got her fired as Egypt’s
director of health education, and Sadat impris-
oned her in 1981 for feminist activism, releasing
her after international outcry. This is the basis of
her Memoirs from the Women’s Prison (translated
by Miriam Cooke, 1986).
Sadawi’s husband Sherif Hetata translates her
novels to English. She has a daughter and a son from
two earlier marriages; the family is active in the Arab
Women’s Solidarity Association, founded by
Sadawi. Currently living in Cairo, she has seen her
work translated into a dozen languages. Woman at
Point Zero (translated by Hetata, 1983) is the most
widely read of her novels. Some critics see its story
of a friendless, poverty-stricken woman driven to
murder by a life in which she has suffered every pos-
sible sexual abuse from child molestation to rape
and forced prostitution as a stunning portrayal of
patriarchy at its worst, while others find its popular-
ity an example of the way in which Sadawi’s com-
plex, highly political feminist analysis is susceptible
to being reduced to grist for sensationalist stereo-
types of Arab women as sexual victims.
Other Works by Nawal Sadawi
Daughter of Isis. Translated by Sherif Hetata. London:
Zed Books, 1999.
The Nawal El Saadawi Reader: Selected Essays
1970–1996. London: Zed Books, 1997.
Works about Nawal Sadawi
Malti-Douglas, Fedwa. Men, Women, and God(s):
Nawal El Saadawi and Arab Feminist Poetics.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995.
Tarabishi, George. Woman Against Her Sex: A Critique
of Nawal El-Saadawi, with a Reply by Nawal El-
Saadawi. London: Al Saqi Books, 1988.
Sa’id, Ali Ahmad
See ADONIS.
Saint-Exupéry, Antoine de (1900–1944)
novelist, nonfiction writer
Best known internationally for his children’s fan-
tasy Le Petit Prince (1943; translated as The Little
Prince, 1943), Antoine de Saint-Exupéry was born
in Lyons and educated in Switzerland at Jesuit
schools. Obsessed with aviation, he joined the
French air force in 1921 but left to become a com-
mercial pilot in 1926. His novels and other works
express his humanist beliefs regarding fairness and
compassion to all humankind, as well as a deep re-
spect for the art of flying.
380 Sadawi, Nawal
As a commercial pilot, Saint-Exupéry’s job in-
volved flying air-mail routes over North Africa, the
South Atlantic, and South America. He based his
first novel, Southern Mail (1929; translated 1933),
on these experiences. He married a young widow
from Buenos Areis in 1931, publishing his second
novel, Vol de Nuit (Night Flight, translated 1932),
that same year.
During World War II, Saint-Exupéry returned
to the military, joining the French air force once
again; however, during combat, his plane was shot
down. He escaped to the United States, where he
joined the Free French Forces. Flight to Arras
(1942; translated 1942) is an account of his
wartime experiences.
Grounded from combat due to his age and mul-
tiple injuries, Saint-Exupéry began to serve as a flight
instructor and reconnaissance pilot. During this
time, he wrote his children’s fantasy, The Little Prince
(1943), for which he has gained lasting popularity.
Saint-Exupéry was last seen alive when he de-
parted to fly a reconnaissance mission over south-
ern France in 1944. His plane vanished without a
trace. After his death, two notebooks that reflect on
his life and ideas were published as Wisdom of the
Sands (1948; translated 1950).
Another Work by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The Tale of the Rose: The Passion that Inspired The Lit-
tle Prince. Translated By Esther Allen. New York:
Random House, 2001.
A Work about Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
Schiff, Stacy. Saint-Exupéry: A Biography. New York:
Alfred A. Knopf, 1995.
Saint-John Perse
See PERSE, SAINT-JOHN.
Saleh, Tayyib (Al-Tayyib Salih) (1929– )
novelist, short-story writer, broadcast journalist
Tayyibb Saleh’s name points his readers toward his
connection to the Islamic African world. The word
tayeb, or tayyeb, in Arabic denotes purity, good-
ness, and piety. In addition, the prophet Saleh is
an important prophet in The Qur’an. Saleh’s con-
tribution to world literature is his ability to fuse
Western and Islamic-African realities in interesting
and accessible ways.
Saleh was born into a farming community in
the northern section of Sudan, a country that has
had a troubled history of conflict with its larger,
wealthier, northern neighbor, Egypt. The Sudan of
which he writes is a country divided by racial, na-
tional, and religious schisms. The seeds of the
geopolitical problems of the region stem from its
European colonial heritage but are also tied to is-
sues of religious and cultural differences that na-
tional boundaries too rarely reflect.
Saleh was raised in a traditional Islamic home,
which meant that he studied the Qur’an regularly.
He had originally intended to follow his father’s
lead and pursue a career in agriculture, but his
path led him to a career in broadcasting. Notably,
Saleh led the dramatic production division of
BBC’s Arabic Service. This experience undoubt-
edly helped him to put the struggle for “true” Su-
danese independence into a larger geopolitical
context.
His most well-known work is the novel Season
of Migration to the North, which was first
published in 1969. The novel operates as a sort of
“response” to Joseph CONRAD’s Heart of Darkness
in that it traces the journey of an Islamic African
named Mustafa as he visits the “horror” of
London, the heart of the imperial center of the
colonial world. The novel also echoes Othello and
other literary encounters between dominant
groups and “marginal” characters, stressing the
deep chasms of cultural misunderstanding that
appear when one encounters those who are
different. As Mustafa puts it in the novel, “May
God have mercy on someone who has turned a
blind eye to error and has indulged in the outward
aspect of things.”
Like the Egyptian writer, Naguib MAHFOUZ, with
whom Saleh shares many thematic interests, Saleh
is not primarily a “protest” writer but one whose
Saleh, Tayyib 381
narratives speak to the richness of the culture out
of which he has sprung and to the need to embrace
the whole experience of a people.
Another Work by Tayyib Saleh
The Wedding of Zein and Other Stories. Washington,
D.C.: Three Continents Press, 1985.
A Work about Tayyib Saleh
Boullata, Issa. Critical Perspectives on Modern Arabic
Literature. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents
Press, 1980.
Samman, Ghada (1942– ) novelist, short-
story writer, essayist, journalist, poet
Born in Damascus, Syria, Samman has written
more than 30 books, including six short-story
collections. The latest, The Square Moon (1994),
uses supernatural elements. Her novel Beirut ’75
(1975) was considered prophetic for seeing the
tensions under the surface of seemingly prosper-
ous Lebanon; Samman wrote it just before the
outbreak of the civil war that would rack the
country for 15 years (1975–90). Her 1976 novel,
Beirut Nightmares, placed her in a group of nov-
elists who stayed in Lebanon during the civil-war
years. Composed in more than 200 “nightmares,”
ranging in length from 10 lines to 10 pages each,
Beirut Nightmares is a riveting experiment in
form, as well as a stunning portrait of civil war
from the apartment window of one woman
trapped by crossfire. Samman’s latest novel, al-Ri-
waya al-mustahila (1997), has not been translated
into English. In addition to short stories and nov-
els, she has written poetry, including Love Across
the Jugular Vein (Arabic) in 1980, which treats
love relationships in an ironic, wry tone that
is, at the same time, infused with warmth and
honesty.
Having lost her mother as a young girl, Sam-
man was raised by her father, a law-school dean.
She earned her B.A. in English literature at the
University of Damascus and her master’s at the
American University of Beirut. She studied in Lon-
don for a time and lived in Europe from 1967
to 1969. Because of problems with Syria’s strict
regulations on Syrians abroad, Samman was un-
able to return to Syria. She settled in Lebanon
where, in 1977, she established her own publish-
ing company.
Samman cuts a striking figure as one of the
best-known feminists of the Arab world. The
heroines of her novels tend to be strong women
breaking out of traditionally feminine roles. Her
writing shows fierce awareness of the economic
exploitation of the poor, in addition to an abiding
concern with gender. Samman’s tone is typically
ironical, urbane, witty, and sometimes cynical,
conveying profound commitment to social and
political issues and attention to the craft of writ-
ing. Samman’s work is translated into Russian,
Romanian, Italian, Persian, German, Spanish, and
English.
Another Work by Ghada Samman
The Square Moon. Translated by Issa J. Boullatta.
Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998.
Works about Ghada Samman
Cooke, Miriam. War’s Other Voices. Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1988.
Zeidan, Joseph. Arab Women Novelists. Albany: State
University of New York Press, 1995.
San Juan, Epifanio (1938– ) poet,
novelist
Epifanio San Juan was born in Manila, Philippines.
He received his B.A. degree from the University of
the Philippines in 1958, left for the United States in
1960, and received his M.A. and Ph.D. from Har-
vard University in 1962 and 1965, respectively. He
has taught in various universities, and is currently
the professor and chair of the Department of
Comparative American Cultures at Washington
State.
San Juan has written poetry, fiction, and literary
criticism, in both Tagalog and English. His works
address important issues, such as class conflict and
382 Samman, Ghada
political struggle in Filipino history, which had re-
mained largely uninvestigated. He seeks to define
the central role of race and racism in America,
using his experience as an Asian intellectual living
in the United States. San Juan believes that litera-
ture constitutes an important critical tool that
should be used to examine and reflect social
change.
San Juan has written more than 100 scholarly
articles, published in journals in Europe, Japan,
the Philippines, and the United States. Although
he is an accomplished poet and novelist, he is bet-
ter known for his work in comparative cultural
studies. His 1972 work, Carlos Buloson and the
Imagination of the Class Struggle, on Carlos Bu-
losan, a famous Filipino-American writer of the
1940s and 1950s, narrates the biography of a tal-
ented Filipino writer who published several im-
portant and influential works before his death in
1956. Bulosan did not manage to return to the
Philippines or to become a U.S. citizen, but his
works are celebrated for their depictions of the
Filipino experience.
Another work, From Exile to Diaspora: Versions
of the Filipino Experience in the United States,
(1998) examines the diasporic experience of Fil-
ipinos, who constitute one of the major immigrant
groups to the United States within the past cen-
tury. In this work, San Juan argues that even in
their overseas location, Filipinos continue to assess
and reexamine their colonial past in view of their
present. Their zeal for democracy and equality re-
mains as vital to their existence in their new
adopted home as in their homeland. This book as
well as The Rise of the Filipino Working Class and
Other Essays (1978), attribute a great degree of
agency to the Filipino people.
San Juan was awarded the Fulbright lectureship
from 1987 to 1988. His book, Racial Formations/
Critical Transformations (1992), won both the Na-
tional Book Award and the Human Rights Award
in 1993. He is the recent recipient of the 1994
Katherine Newman Award from the Society for the
Study of Multi-ethnic Literatures in the United
States.
Another Work by Epifanio San Juan
From the Masses, to the Masses: Third World Litera-
ture and Revolution. Minneapolis, Minn.: MEP
Publications, 1994.
Sand, George (Amandine-Aurore-Lucile
Dupin)
(1804–1876) novelist
Noted for her skill as a writer as well as for her
numerous love affairs with prominent men, such
as Alfred de MUSSET and Frédéric Chopin, French
romantic (see ROMANTICISM) novelist George Sand
was born in Paris and raised and educated at her
grandmother’s country estate, which Sand inher-
ited in 1821. In 1822, she married Baron Casimir
Dudevant. Financially and socially secure, Sand
bore two children with Dudevant, but she never
found happiness with him nor reconciled her in-
tellectual and artistic goals with those of wife and
mother. She left her family in 1831 to return to
Paris and embarked on a career as a writer.
Sand wrote and edited for several journals, in-
cluding the prominent Le Figaro, Révue de Deux
Mondes, and La République. Through her employ-
ment, she became acquainted with several well-
known poets, artists, and philosophers. Her early
works, in particular, show the influence these asso-
ciations had on her. This was particularly true
throughout the 1830s when, in response to rapidly
expanding industrialization, Sand and her associ-
ates sought, through their works, to cure society
of the evils of new technology. She was joined in
this cause by Franz Liszt, with whom she became
very good friends. Several other prominent figures
with whom Sand was involved during this period
and whose views distinctly reveal themselves in her
writings include the revolutionary Michel de
Bourges and Pierre Leroux.
One relationship in particular marked the start
of Sand’s career as a novelist: Her affair with fel-
low writer Jules Sandeau led them to coauthor and
publish a novel, Rose et Blanche (1831), under the
pseudonym Jules Sand. She assumed the name
George for her second novel, Indiana (1832), which
recounts the tale of a young woman who is both
Sand, George 383
abused by her much older husband and deceived
by her treacherous lover. The work was an instant
success and was soon followed by the publication
of popular novels in the 1830s, such as Lélia
(1833), which exalted free love over conventional
marriage.
In the 1840s, Sand began to break away from
the molds provided for her by the men in her life
and started to establish her unique writing voice.
She became firmly committed to the ideals of so-
cialism and, as a result, her works often provoked
controversy. Alongside economic and social
themes, Sand often questioned the preconceived
notions of gendered identity. Her autobiography,
Histoire de ma vie (1855), for example, raises ques-
tions about gender and sexuality that emerged
from her complicated and unconventional life.
Sand’s works were extremely popular during
her lifetime. She wrote novels, memoirs, essays,
short stories, and even children’s fairy tales that
often carried a deeper, more mature meaning. She
died on June 8, having paved the way for female
novelists, and left behind a lasting influence on fel-
low writers Fyodor DOSTOYEVSKY, Gustave FLAUBERT
and Marcel PROUST.
Other Works by George Sand
The Castle of Pictures and Other Stories: A Grand-
mother’s Tales. Translated by Holly Erskine Hirko.
New York: Feminist Press at the City University of
New York, 1994.
Horace. Translated by Zack Rogow. San Franciso:
Mercury House, 1995.
Works about George Sand
Jack, Belinda Elizabeth. George Sand: A Woman’s Life
Writ Large. London: Chatto and Windus, 1999.
Massardier-Kenney, Françoise. Gender in the Fiction
of George Sand. Atlanta, Ga.: Rodopi, 2000.
Saramago, José (1922– ) novelist
José Saramago was born in Azinhaga, Portugal. His
parents, José de Sousa and Maria da Piedade, were
landless subsistence farmers. His last name, differ-
ent from his father’s, was written on his birth cer-
tificate as a joke by the public official who regis-
tered his birth. José de Sousa, the father, was called
Saramago as a nickname because Saramago was a
kind of wild green that was eaten in Azinhaga by
the very poor.
Saramago was extremely close to his grandfa-
ther who, though illiterate, was an eloquent story-
teller. The two of them, old man and young boy,
would go on summer nights to sleep beneath a
large fig tree by their house, and the grandfather
would tell stories into the night. This formative ex-
perience instilled in Saramago a love of narrative
and fantasy. Years later, he would begin to write in
an attempt to preserve his memories of his grand-
father and grandmother and his experiences of
hearing stories under the fig tree.
Having moved to Lisbon, where Saramago’s fa-
ther worked as a policeman, Saramago went to el-
ementary school and excelled. However, after a few
years, his parents could no longer afford a liberal
education for their son. He was sent to a technical
school instead, where he trained to be a mechanic.
Even at technical school, Saramago sought out the
poems and stories contained in the literary an-
thologies that were used to teach grammar. He
spent his evenings in the public library, reading
whatever books he came across and practicing his
French.
It was at this time that Saramago discovered
the work of Fernando PESSOA, who was the inspi-
ration for Saramago’s novel The Year of the Death
of Ricardo Reis (1984). Ricardo Reis was one of
Pessoa’s pseudonyms, and Saramago’s novel
explores the meaning of Pessoa’s work in the face
of the fascism that plagued Portugal in the 20th
century.
Saramago worked for a few years as a me-
chanic and then managed to get a job as a civil
servant. In 1950, he lost this job because of his
affiliation with the Communist Party. He man-
aged to find some work as a journalist and in the
publishing industry, but as the political situation
became more and more radically conservative, it
became impossible for Saramago to find work
384 Saramago, José
anywhere. It was this situation that prompted
him in 1976 at age 54 to dedicate himself to writ-
ing novels full time.
For the next 20 years, Saramago produced a
steady stream of exceptional novels that blend alle-
gorical symbolism, politics, and a unique narrative
style. Finally, in 1998, Saramago was awarded the
Nobel Prize in literature, the first Portuguese citi-
zen to receive that award.
Critical Analysis
Saramago’s novels share certain affinities with the
MAGIC REALISM of some novels of Latin America,
whose political contexts often center on colonial-
ism. Though Portugal was a colonial power and
not a colony, its separation from the rest of Europe,
due to the fascist regimes that held power after
World War II, create many similarities between
Saramago’s Portugal and Latin America.
He explores these political themes in his novel
The Stone Raft (1986), in which the Iberian Penin-
sula breaks off from Europe and starts to float
south on the ocean. The Stone Raft is a utopian
novel in which the image of Portugal floating to-
ward Africa represents Saramago’s political vision
of a world in which the oppressors in Europe come
together with the oppressed peoples of developing
nations.
In 1991, Saramago wrote The Gospel According
to Jesus Christ. This book presents Christ in a very
humanized form, emphasizing his family relation-
ships and his love affair with Mary Magdalene. The
novel was written as a critique of the strict Catholi-
cism of Portugal and as an exploration of meta-
physical doubt. The Portuguese government
reacted strongly against it for its anti-Catholic
views and vetoed its presentation for the European
Literary Prize. In protest, Saramago moved to the
Canary Islands.
In 1995, Saramago wrote Blindness, which is
probably his most widely read book in the English-
speaking world. It recounts an epidemic of a mys-
terious blindness that strikes people in an
unnamed country seemingly at random. In his
Nobel lecture, Saramago said of the book,
Blind. The apprentice thought, “we are blind,”
and he sat down and wrote Blindness to remind
those who might read it that we pervert reason
when we humiliate life, that human dignity is
insulted every day by the powerful of our
world, that the universal lie has replaced the
plural truths, and that man stopped respecting
himself when he lost respect for his fellow-
creatures.
Largely unknown outside of Europe before
winning the Nobel Prize, Saramago is quickly be-
coming the most popular Portuguese writer
worldwide. His perceptiveness about human na-
ture coupled with his strong moral and political
concerns allow his novels to reveal to the reader a
view of reality that was previously hidden. Saram-
ago uses magic-realist techniques in a mode that
both revitalizes his readers and stirs them to moral
action.
Other Works by José Saramago
All the Names. Translated from the Portuguese by
Margaret Jull Costa. New York: Harcourt, 1999.
Baltasar and Blimunda. Translated from the Por-
tuguese by Giovanni Pontiero. San Diego: Har-
court Brace Jovanovich, 1987.
Journey to Portugal. Translated from the Portuguese
and with notes by Amanda Hopkinson and Nick
Caistor. London: Harvill Press, 2000.
Sargeson, Frank (1903–1982) novelist
Frank Sargeson was born to a middle-class family
in Hamilton, New Zealand, completed his training
as a solicitor in Auckland in 1926, and traveled in
Britain and Europe for two years. He returned to
New Zealand and took on various odd jobs before
settling on his family land near Takapuna, remain-
ing there for the rest of his life and making his liv-
ing as a full-time writer. Between 1936 and 1954,
Sargeson published 40 stories, most of which were
completed before 1945. He continued writing in
the postwar period, but he was unable to produce
many works. Sargeson’s writings reveal him as a
Sargeson, Frank 385
writer who continued to develop and improve his
art as he grew older. In his 60s, he experienced a
new zest for writing, which culminated in the pub-
lication of his first complete collection of stories,
Collected Stories, 1935–1963 (1964). By the time
Sargeson turned 70, he had begun to write a num-
ber of autobiographies and memoirs, veering away
from the macabre and dark satirical style that
characterize his writings of the previous decade.
His trilogy of memoirs is, in comparison, anec-
dotal and lighthearted. These memoirs, which
traces Sargeson’s life as a writer from 1930 to 1970,
are titled Once Is Enough (1973), More Than
Enough (1975), and Never Enough (1977).
Sargeson’s earlier works are remarkable for
their stark depiction of human characters whose
limited vision and lack of imagination represent
the New Zealand working-class society. His central
characters, usually the narrators of the stories, are
often undistinguished and ordinary with puritan-
ical upbringing that dictates actions and choices.
Readers can appreciate these stories through
Sargeson’s mastery in conveying the poignant but
realistic social circumstances of the working-class
majority. In stories such as “The Making of a New
Zealander” (1940) and “That Summer” (1946), the
main characters are represented by unsettled la-
borers and unemployed men whose limited visions
do not allow them to recognize and challenge the
social forces that constitute the causes of their un-
happy lives.
In the 1960s, Sargeson began to experiment
with a different narrative technique. Using dark
humor, he examines a new set of characters now
taken from the middle classes whose better social
positions ironically do not give them any advan-
tage over the less-educated working classes of
Sargeson’s earlier short stories and novels. For in-
stance, in the novel The Hangover (1967), Sargeson
describes the dark world of a young university stu-
dent caught between his duty to obey his puritan-
ical but demented mother and his desire to indulge
in the sensual pleasures of the city. The narratives
of Sargeson’s stories, unlike his earlier works, are
elaborate and verbose.
In the 1970s, Sargeson began to write another
form of narrative, reminiscent of his earlier writ-
ings but dealing with subjects closer to his heart.
These were mainly autobiographies and critical
writings. He managed to complete two novellas
before his death in 1982: Sunset Village (1976), a
comic crime mystery, and En Route (1979), a story
relating a journey of self-discovery, which was
published together with a novella by Edith
Campion, another New Zealand author, in a joint
volume entitled Tandem. Sargeson’s achievements
in fiction enable New Zealand writing to be
appreciated and recognized all over the world.
Other Works by Frank Sargeson
Conversation in a Train, and Other Critical Writing.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
I Saw in My Dream. Auckland, N.Z.: Auckland
University Press, 1974.
Joy of the Worm. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1969.
Man of England Now; With, I for One . . ., And, a Game
of Hide and Seek. London: Martin, Brian and O’-
Keefe, 1972.
Memoirs of a Peon. London: MacGibbon and Kee,
1965; Auckland, N.Z.: Heinemann, 1974.
Never Enough: Places and People Mainly. Wellington,
N.Z.: Reed. 1978.
Sunset Village. London: Martin, Brian, and O’Keefe,
1976.
Works about Frank Sargeson
King, Michael. Frank Sargeson: A Life. New York:
Viking, 1995.
McEldowney, Dennis. Frank Sargeson in His Time.
Dunedin, New Zealand: McIndoe, 1976.
Sarmiento, Félix Rubén García
See DARÍO, RUBÉN.
Sarraute, Nathalie (1900–1999) novelist,
essayist
Pioneer and leading theorist of the French nouveau
roman or NEW NOVEL, Nathalie Sarraute was born
386 Sarmiento, Félix Rubén García
in Ivanova, Russia, on July 18 to intellectual par-
ents: Her father worked in the field of sciences, and
her mother published novels under the pseudo-
nym of Vichrovski. They divorced, however, when
Sarraute was two years old, and she went to live
with her mother in Paris where, at a young age,
French became her primary language. Her mother
eventually remarried and the family returned to
Russia when Sarraute was eight years old. She re-
mained in close contact with her father, spending
one month each year with him. When he began to
encounter difficulties in Russia over his political
views, he emigrated to France. Sarraute followed
two years later to live with him in Paris and did not
return again to her native Russia until 1936.
Sarraute received the bulk of her education at
the Sorbonne, where she studied literature and law.
In 1921, she spent a year at Oxford, prior to travel-
ing to Berlin, where she continued to study legal
science. She married Raymond Sarraute, a fellow
law student, in 1925 and became a member of the
French bar in 1926. She remained an active mem-
ber until 1941 when she quit law to pursue a career
as a writer.
Sarraute began writing while she was actively
practicing law. Her first work, Tropismes (1932),
was completed in 1932. It contains 24 short
sketches based on nameless characters who are
trapped by their interdependence on each other.
Initially, the work was not well received or under-
stood. It was rereleased in 1957 at the height of the
popularity of the new-novel style and received
greater success and critical acclaim.
During the 1950s and 1960s, Sarraute, along-
side fellow writers such as Alain
ROBBE-GRILLET,
Claude SIMON, Marguerite DURAS, and Michel
Butor, worked to pioneer the new-novel format.
Exemplified by such works as Sarraute’s Portrait
d’un homme inconnu (Portrait of an Unknown Man,
1951), which Jean-Paul SARTRE dubbed an anti-
novel, the new novel discarded the conventional
ideas of structure. In her works, Sarraute routinely
abandoned chronological order and shifted point
of view freely to focus instead on the conscious and
subconscious minds of her characters.
Central to Sarraute’s works is the idea of inter-
personal relationships. Portrait of an Unknown
Man explores a daughter’s difficult relationship
with her miserly father. Martereau (1953) recounts
the internal tensions that arise in a family structure
that is made up of individuals whose personalities
are vastly different. In both of these works, the
constantly shifting point of view calls into question
the narrator’s reliability. In Le Planétarium (1959),
Sarraute does away with the narrator entirely in
what is considered to be both an ironic comedy of
manners and a parable of the creative process.
In the mid-1950s, Sarraute began to work on
critical essays as she continued to write fiction. In
L’Ere de soupçon (The Age of Suspicion, 1956), she
attempts to analyze her own creative process and
the goals she had for her works. In later years, she
also devoted time to writing critical analyses on the
works of other authors, including Paul
VALÉRY and
Gustave FLAUBERT. Sarraute expanded her writing
further to include work on a number of radio and
stage plays and on her partial autobiography,
Childhood (1983), which was adapted for the stage.
Sarraute died at the end of a lengthy and produc-
tive career in Paris on October 19.
Other Works by Nathalie Sarraute
Collected Plays. Translated by Maria Jolas and Barbara
Wright. New York: George Braziller, 1981.
Here: A Novel. Translated by Barbara Wright. New
York: George Braziller, 1997.
Works about Nathalie Sarraute
Barbour, Sarah. Nathalie Sarraute and the Feminist
Reader: Identities in Process. Lewisburg, Pa.: Buck-
nell University Press, 1993.
Knapp, Bettina. Nathalie Sarraute. Atlanta, Ga.:
Rodopi, 1994.
Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–1980) novelist,
playwright, essayist
Best known for his ties to EXISTENTIALISM,a phi-
losophy that emphasizes the ultimate importance
of human freedom, as well as for his long-term
Sartre, Jean-Paul 387