John Berger

John Berger (born in London, 1926) is one of the greatest writers of the last 50 years, with a vast work which unfolds into narrative fiction, poetry and essays (mostly in the arts domain). He is also a screenwriter (he worked with Alain Tanner) and a critic. He has often been on the short-list for the Booker Prize, which he won in 1972, with the novel G. Of his works, translated in Portugal are: the essay Ways of Seeing (70 Editions), a book on Dürer (Taschen), And Our Faces, My Heart, Brief as Photos (Quasi editions), From A to X and Here is Where We Meet (both from Civilização publisher).When this book was published, Jorge Silva Melo wrote “I don’t even know how to qualify this last, marvelous book of his. It’s not chronicles, or essays or fiction; he just goes wherever his memory takes him. And it begins right there, at the Príncipe Real, under the tree, when he sees an old woman and recognizes his mother, who’s been dead for several years. And that drives him to walk around Lisbon, cross the Tagus, visit Cacilhas, and eat “toucinho do céu”. And the entire book is like that, wandering through places of his life (Madrid, Prague, London…) and the ghosts of those who accompanied him when he was growing up: his mother, teachers, friends that never come, a life lived through the painful eyes of a wanderer. One of the most remarkable books of the 20th and 21st centuries. […] You can read it in one night and then think about what life made of us.”