Manual of Painting and Calligraphy was Jos Saramago\'s first novel.
The brilliant juxtaposition of a passionate love story and the crisis of a nation.
A struggling young artist, commissioned to paint a portrait of an influential industrialist, learns in the process about himself and the world around him.
Written eight years before the critically acclaimed Baltasar and Blimunda , it is a story of self-discovery set against the background of the last years of Salazar\'s dictatorship.
Manual of Painting and Calligraphy was Jos Saramago\'s first novel