Why Saramago won a Nobel

Jose Saramago's complex and compelling, if also challenging, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, is now tipping the balance and becoming more of a story about the shy courtship - at least he's shy, she's pretty forward - between the two proof-readers (she's his supervisor), Raimundo Silva and Maria Sara - she embarked him on the project of rewriting the historical work on the siege as a work of fiction, incorporating his own inventions, and as he took off on this project he became increasingly interested in her - and now, some 200 pages into the novel, she at last stops by his small apartment - you get the feeling she's the first woman ever to do so, aside from his not-so-effective cleaning lady - and they engage in a sweet little discussion, looking out his window, about various locations where the siege he's writing about took place, some 700 years before (if my assessment of the time scheme is right). Most of all, it's sweet and kind of funny to see his awkward approaches to her, wondering if he should take her hand, and even if he should kiss her, and her gentle rebuffs - but it's also obvious that they both seem to care about each other and want this relationship to develop. They're like two children - he, especially, even though he's a man of about 40+. What Saramago is working here plays out on a couple of levels: as noted yesterday, there are really two sieges going on, hundreds of years apart and in two separate versions of The History of the Siege of Lisbon: the Portuguese assault on the Moor-controlled city, and RS's attempt to win the heart, or hand, of his supervisor, MS; second, stories are overlaid not only in time but in space, the map of Lisbon becoming something like a pentimento, as we see a modern city overlaid on a map of history, which RS is trying to bring alive; and third, we see many layers of narrative engaged in interplay: the historical book on the siege the RS was editing; the "new" and fictional version of the siege, which he is struggling to write (he has never written a book or even a story, but hes embarking on this ambitious course); the novel by Saramago that we are reading - and S. speculates at various times about the difficulties a novelist faces in trying to create a character out of nothing but words. That, of course, is what historians do as well: create an understanding of another time and place, with nothing but words (well, they can also use documents, illustrations, graphics, etc.). Not sure what the final "meaning" of the novel will be, if there will be any grand conclusion to all these plot lines, but it's definitely among the most intellectually challenging and provocative novels I've read recently - you can see why Saramago won a Nobel, as he's the kin, if not the equal (he's a little too self-consciously playful; his hand in the game is too obvious), of the great European modernists, Joyce, Mann, and Proust.