JOSÉ SARAMAGO , Nobel Prize-Winning Writer, Dies

José de Sousa Saramago, born November 16, 1922- died June 18 2010 was a Portuguese writer, playwright and journalist.

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

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 Río, who is the official translator of his books into Spanish.

José 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 has been a member of the Portuguese Communist Party since 1969,  as well as an atheist and self-described pessimist. His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

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”.