author

Some people spend their entire lives reading but never get beyond reading the words on the page, they don't understand that the words are merely stepping stones placed across a fast-flowing river, and the reason they're there is so that we can reach the farther shore, it's the other side that matters.
-- José de Sousa Saramago

José de Saramago died of Leukemia on June 18 at the age of 87 at his home in Lanzarote, one of Spain's Canary Islands. The Spanish newspaper EL PAIS devoted 8 pages to him as a tribute. He moved to Spain from Portugal after a dispute with the Portuguese Government in 1991, which he accused of censorship after one of his books was banned.Saramago's controversial novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, was excluded from the European Union literary contest Ariosto by Sousa Lara, Under-Secretary of State of Portugal, but after international protest it was returned to the list of candidates. Saramago interprets the key episodes from the Gospels from an ironic point of view, inventing new miracles and prophesies.

The human heart is never content, and that doing one's duty does not bring peace of mind, though those who are easily satisfied would have us believe otherwise."

José Saramago was born in Azinhaga, in the province of Ribatejo in Portugal. He was forced to abandon school in order to earn his living. Saramago was educated as a technician, and before becoming a journalist, translator, and writer, he did a number of manual jobs. He joined in 1969 the Communist Party of Portugal, which was forbidden during the military dictatorship of Salazar, but he also criticized the party. In the 1970s Saramago supported himself mostly by translation works. Since 1979 he devoted himself entirely to writing.
International critical acclaim came late in his life, starting with his 1982 historical fantasy "Memorial do Convento," published in English in 1988 as "Baltasar and Blimunda."
The story is set during the Inquisition and explores the battle between individuals and organized religion, reinforcing Saramago's recurring theme of the loner struggling against authority. he was the first and only so far Portuguese author to win the Nobel Prize for literature.

Saramago published plays, short stories, novels, poems, libretti, diaries, and travelogues. His first novel appeared in 1977. Its basic theme is the genesis of the artist, of a painter as well as a writer. In Journey to Portugal (1981), Saramago searched for the idea of Portugal, a few years after the dictatorship had ended. To see his country with with fresh eyes and fresh wonder. His style was described as experimental.

An intellectual who defended what he thought to be just, until the last moment.

‘We won’t change the world,
said José Saramago, if we don’t change our own lives first’.