BRIEFLY NOTED.(poetry)(Book review)

Publication: The New Yorker

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COPYRIGHT 2006 All rights reserved. Reproduced by permission of The Condé Nast Publications Inc.

Seeing, by Jose Saramago, translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (Harcourt; $25). Saramago's sombre masterpiece "Blindness" had an almost mythic power, whereas his latest novel, a political satire set in the same nameless capital city, opens with more wit and less heart. When Election Day coincides with a terrible rainstorm, the government worries that no one will venture out to vote. This fear is unfounded, but the election results are even more alarming: seventy per cent of the city's voters have cast a blank ballot. Saramago has...

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