Saramago, José
Saramago's novels include Levantado do chão (1980; tr. Raised from the Ground, 2012); Memorial do convento (1982; tr. Baltasar and Blimunda, 1987), a picaresque love story set in the Portuguese Inquisition and the work that first brought him international acclaim; O ano da morte de Ricardo Reis (1984; tr. The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, 1990); A jangada de pedra (1986; tr. The Stone Raft, 1995); the controversial O evangelho segundo Jesus Cristo (1991; tr. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, 1994); Ensaio sobre a cegueira (1995; tr. Blindness, 1998), perhaps his finest work, a political parable in which a city lapses into barbarism following a plague of blindness, and its sequel, Ensaio sobre a lucidez (2004; tr. Seeing, 2006); Todos os nomes (1997; tr. All the Names, 1999); A Caverna (2000; tr. The Cave, 2002); Homem duplicado (2002; tr. The Double, 2004), Intermitências da morte (2005, tr. Death with Interruptions, 2008); Viagem do elefante (2008, tr. The Elephant's Journey, 2010); and Caim (2009, tr. Cain, 2011), his last novel. Saramago also wrote poetry, essays, plays, journals, and two memoirs. After the Portuguese government blocked the nomination of his 1991 novel about Jesus for a literary prize, he moved (1992) to Lanzarote in the Canary Islands in a symbolic act of self-exile. Critics have noted that the novels written after the move are more austere, stylized, allegorical, and universal than his previous Portugal-themed works. Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998, the first Portuguese-language writer to achieve the honor.
See study by H. Bloom, ed. (2005).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
See more Encyclopedia articles on: Spanish and Portuguese Literature: Biographies