José Saramago was born in Azinnhaga into a peasant family. Two years after his birth, the family moved to Lisbon in search of new opportunities.
A good student from primary school onwards, due to financial problems he was unable to complete his secondary school studies and entered a vocational school where he spent five years learning the trade of locksmith mechanic.
In 1947, the year of the birth of his only daughter Violante, he published his first novel, La viuda (The Widow), but for editorial convenience it was published under the name Terra do Pecado (Land of Sin).
At the end of the 1950s, he began to work for the publishing house Estúdios Cor as head of production. This new activity brought him into contact with some of the most important Portuguese writers of the time.
He also worked as a translator of authors such as Tolstoy, Baudelaire and Raymond Bayer, and later as a literary critic.
1966 marked his official return as a writer with the publication of Os Poemas Possíveis. This book was followed, in 1970, by another collection of poems, Probably Joy, and then, in 1971 and 1973 respectively, by the titles Deste Mundo e do Outro and A Bagagem do Viajante.
With the arrival of democracy in Portugal, Saramago began his best-known and most active period. His Memorial of the Convent was adapted into an opera in 1982 and two years later one of his best-known works, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, was published.
His great success came with The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, a work that aroused great controversy, something that influenced his decision to settle on the island of Lanzarote with his second wife in 1991, where he remained until his death in 2010.
Essay on Blindness, one of his most acclaimed books, was made into a film in 2008.
In 1998 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, the highest award in the world of literature.
