Historical Figure
José Saramago
1922–2010
Portuguese novelist (1922–2010)
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Biography
José de Sousa Saramago was a Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."
In Their Own Words (5)
when you are old and realize that time is running out, you start imagining that you have the cure for all the ills of the world in your hand, and get frustrated because no one pays you any attention,
p. 172 , 1997
That it’s possible not to see a lie even when it’s in front of us.
p. 210 , 1997
A writer is a man like any other: he dreams. And my dream was to be able to say of this book, when I finished: 'This is a book about Alentejo'.
Quoted in José Saramago: il bagaglio dello scrittore, page 41, by Giulia Lanciani, published by Bulzoni, 1996 , 9788871199337 (256 pages). , 1996
In order to protect the physical hygiene and mental health of the living, we usually bury the dead.
p. 181 , 1997
Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.
p. 126 , 1995
Timeline
The story of José Saramago, told in moments.
Published his first novel at 25. Then wrote nothing for almost 20 years. Worked as a mechanic, translator, and journalist. Joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969.
Published Blindness, a novel about an epidemic of white blindness sweeping through an unnamed city. No character has a name. No quotation marks. Sentences run for pages. It sold millions.
Won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The first Portuguese-language writer to receive it. The Vatican newspaper called his selection "objectionable." Saramago was a lifelong atheist and Communist.
Died at his home in Lanzarote, Canary Islands. Age 87. He'd moved there in 1992 after the Portuguese government censored his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.
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