Jose de Sousa Saramago
Born	( 1922-11-16 ) November 16, 1922 Azinhaga , Ribatejo , Portugal
Died	June 18, 2010 (2010-06-18) (aged 87) Lanzrote , Spain
Occupation	Playwright , Novelist
Nationality	Portugal
Period	1947-present
Notable works	Baltasar and Blimunda , The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis

Jose de Sousa Saramago , (pronounced|?u?z? s????magu; born November 16, 1922; died June 18, 2010) was a Portuguese writer , playwright and journalist .

Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. He lived on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands , Spain .

Biography [ change | change source ]

Saramago was born into a family of landless peasants in Azinhaga , Portugal , a small village in the province of Ribatejo some hundred kilometers north-east of Lisbon .

Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947. Since 1988, Saramago has been married to the Spanish journalist Pilar del Rio, who is the official translator of his books into Spanish.

Jose Saramago was in his mid-fifties before he had international success; his novel Baltasar and Blimunda brought him an international readership. This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award.

Saramago was a member of the Portuguese Communist Party from 1969, until his death ^[1] as well as an atheist ^[2] and self-described pessimist. ^[3] His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ . ^[4]

Themes [ change | change source ]

Saramago uses for his works fantastic scenarios . In his 1986 novel, The Stone Raft , the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the rest of Europe and sails about the Atlantic Ocean . In his 1995 novel, Blindness , an entire country is stricken with a mysterious plague called “white blindness”.

Bibliography [ change | change source ]

References [ change | change source ]

Bibliography [ change | change source ]

• Baptista Bastos, Jose Saramago : Aproximacao a um retrato , Dom Quixote, 1996
• T.C. Cerdeira da Silva, Entre a historia e aficcao : Uma saga de portugueses , Dom Quixote, 1989
• Maria da Conceicao Madruga, A paixao segundo Jose Saramago : a paixao do verbo e o verbo da paixao , Campos das Letras, Porto, 1998
• Horacio Costa, Jose Saramago : O Periodo Formativo , Ed. Caminho, 1998
• Helena I. Kaufman, Ficcao historica portuguesa da pos-revolucao , Madison, 1991
• O. Lopes, Os sinais e os sentidos : Literatura portuguesa do seculo XX , Lisboa, 1986
• Carlos Reis, Dialogos com Jose Saramago , Ed. Caminho, Lisboa, 1998
• M. Maria Seixo, O essencial sobre Jose Saramago , Imprensa Nacional, 1987
• "Saramago, Jose (1922-)." Encyclopedia of World Biography. Ed. Tracie Ratiner. Vol. 25. 2nd ed. Detroit: Thomson Gale, 2005. Discovering Collection. Thomson Gale. University of Guelph. 25 Sep. 2007

Other websites [ change | change source ]

• The Unexpected Fantasist , a portrait of Jose Saramago, written by Fernanda Eberstadt and published August 26, 2007 in The New York Times Magazine
• Introduction and video of Saramago from "Heroes de los dos bandos" -spanish civil war-
• Interviews with Saramago in video Archived 2019-08-29 at the Wayback Machine
• Jose Saramago from Pegasos Archived 2007-04-20 at the Wayback Machine
• Translation of interview with Saramago in El Pais - 12-Nov-2005