Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa

Copyright © 2006 by José Saramago and Editorial Caminho, SA, Lisbon, by arrangement with Literarische Agentur Mertin, Inh. Nicole Witt e. K., Frankfurt am Main, Germany

English translation copyright © 2009 by Margaret Jull Costa

First published as As Pequenas Memórias in 2006 by Editorial Caminho, SA, Lisbon

First published in Great Britain in 2009 by Harvill Secker, Random House

THE VILLAGE IS CALLED Azinhaga and has, so to speak, been where it is since the dawn of nationhood (it had a charter as early as the thirteenth century), but nothing remains of that glorious ancient history except the river that passes right by it (and has done, I imagine, since the world was created) and which, as far as I know, has never changed direction, although it has overflowed its banks on innumerable occasions. Less than half a mile from the last houses, to the south, the Almonda, for that is the name of my village's river, meets the Tejo, which (or, if you'll allow me, whom) it used to help, in times past and as far as its limited volume would allow, to flood the fields when the clouds unleashed the torrential winter rains, and the dams upstream, brimful and bursting, were obliged to discharge the excess of accumulated water. The land around there is flat, as smooth as the palm of your hand, with no orographic irregularities tospeak of, and any dikes that were built served not so much to contain the powerful rush of the river when it floods as to guide it along a course where it would cause least damage.