José Saramago

The Nobel Prize in Literature has been awarded 109 times to 113 Nobel Laureates between 1901 and 2016. In 1998, Portuguese-born writer José de Sousa Saramago was awarded such a prestigious prize.

José Saramago visited Madeira four times, "liked" the island and "was impressed" with the mountains, especially the Curral das Freiras, says the writer's daughter, Violante Saramago Matos. In an interview with the Lusa agency, Violante mentioned that José Saramago was in Madeira for three conferences, one at the Jaime Moniz secondary school and another at the University of Madeira. The other two trips went to a painting exhibition and the granddaughter's wedding, he points out. "He liked Madeira, especially the mountains. He was impressed by two or three landscapes, especially the Curral das Freiras. Violante explains that her father used to say that he loved “..the terraces, the agricultural work that shows the will to win the mountain, the genesis and timbre of a people who go up there by building, building, winning." Violante stresses that in these visits, José Saramago saw in this territory "a lot of growth, but little development", emphasizing that he had "by comparison an island, Lanzarote", where it is "concerned about sustainability, environment, occupation of the territory and the needs of its people".

José Saramago was born on 16 November 1922 into a family from Azinhaga, a small village in Ribatejo Province, some one hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon. He worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, a position he had to leave after the democratic revolution in 1974. After a period of working as a translator he was able to support himself solely as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only daughter, Violante, was born in 1947. In 1986 he met Spanish journalist Pilar del Rio. They married in 1988 and remained together until his death. Del Río is the official translator of Saramago's books into Spanish.

Saramago joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969 and remained a member until the end of his life. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages.  Saramago was criticized by institutions such as the Catholic Church, the European Union and the International Monetary Fund, with whom he disagreed on various issues. An atheist, he defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition. In 1992, the Government of Portugal under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the Aristeion Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, upon which he resided until his death on 18 June 2010. Saramago was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992, and co-founder with Orhan Pamuk, of the European Writers' Parliament (EWP).

Harold Bloom described Saramago as "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."  The Guardian described him as "the finest Portuguese writer of his generation", while Fernanda Eberstadt of The New York Times said he was "known almost as much for his unfaltering Communism as for his fiction".

José Saramago being awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature (1998)