José Saramago
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Born: | November 16, 1922 (age 84) Azinhaga, Ribatejo, Portugal |
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Occupation: | Playwright, Novelist |
Nationality: | Portuguese |
Writing period: | 1947-present |
Debut works: | Terra do Pecado |
José de Sousa Saramago, GCSE (pron. IPA [Ê’u'zÉ› sÉɾÉ'magu]; born November 16, 1922) is a Nobel-laureate Portuguese writer, playwright and journalist. His works commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor rather than the official story. Some of his works can also be seen as allegories.
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Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998. He currently lives on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands, Spain.
Saramago was in his mid-fifties before he won international acclaim. It was the 1988 publication of his Baltasar and Blimunda that first brought him to the attention of an English-speaking 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’s novels often deal with fantastic scenarios, such as that in his 1986 novel, The Stone Raft, where the Iberian Peninsula breaks off from the rest of Europe and sails about the Atlantic Ocean. In his 1995 novel, Blindness, an entire unnamed country is stricken with a mysterious plague, or “white blindnessâ€. In his 1984 novel, The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (which won the PEN Award and the Independent Foreign Fiction Award), Fernando Pessoa’s heteronym survives for a year after the poet himself dies.
Using such imaginative themes, Saramago succinctly addresses the most serious of subject matter with boundless wit and keen insight. He sprinkles quirky segues and asides into his sparsely punctuated but sumptuous narrative thread. His greatest asset as an author is his empathy for the human condition and for the isolation of contemporary urban life. His characters struggle with their need to connect with one another, form relations, and bond as a community, and with their need for individuality, and to find meaning and dignity outside of political and economic structures. Harold Bloom has stated that he considers José Saramago the "most gifted novelist alive in the world today".
[edit] Family history
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. His parents were José de Sousa and Maria de Piedade. "Saramago," a wild herbaceous plant known in English language as wild radish, was his father's family's nickname, which got accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth. In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon, where his father started working as a policeman. A few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him attending a grammar school, moving him to a technical school at age 12; after finishing school, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist, and finally as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947. Saramago is currently married to Pilar del RÃo, from a very powerful Barcelona family of editors who actively promote his books around the world, and they live on the Spanish island of Lanzarote.
[edit] Style
Saramago tends to write long sentences, often more than a page long. He uses periods sparingly, choosing instead a loose flow of clauses joined by commas. Many of his paragraphs match the length of some authors' chapters. He uses no quotation marks to delimit dialog; when the speaker changes Saramago capitalizes the first letter of the new speaker's clause. In his novels Blindness and The Cave, Saramago sometimes abandons the use of proper nouns; indeed, the difficulty of naming is a recurring theme in his work.
[edit] Bibliography
Title | Year | English title | Year | ISBN |
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Terra do Pecado | 1947 | |||
Os Poemas PossÃveis | 1966 | |||
Provavelmente Alegria | 1970 | |||
Deste Mundo e do Outro | 1971 | |||
A Bagagem do Viajante | 1973 | |||
As Opiniões que o DL teve | 1974 | |||
O Ano de 1993 | 1975 | |||
Os Apontamentos | 1976 | |||
Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia | 1977 | Manual of Painting and Calligraphy | 1993 | ISBN 1857540433 |
Objecto Quase | 1978 | |||
Viagem a Portugal | 1981 | Journey to Portugal | 2000 | ISBN 0151005877 |
Memorial do Convento | 1982 | Baltasar and Blimunda | 1987 | ISBN 0151105553 |
O Ano da Morte de Ricardo Reis | 1986 | The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis | 1991 | ISBN 0151997357 |
A Jangada de Pedra | 1986 | The Stone Raft | 1994 | ISBN 0151851980 |
História do Cerco de Lisboa | 1989 | The History of the Siege of Lisbon | 1996 | ISBN 015100238X |
O Evangelho Segundo Jesus Cristo | 1991 | The Gospel According to Jesus Christ | 1993 | ISBN 0151367000 |
Ensaio sobre a Cegueira | 1995 | Blindness | 1997 | ISBN 0151002517 |
Todos os Nomes | 1997 | All the Names | 1999 | ISBN 0151004218 |
O Conto da Ilha Desconhecida | 1997 | The Tale of the Unknown Island | 1999 | ISBN 0151005958 |
A Caverna | 2001 | The Cave | 2002 | ISBN 0151004145 |
O Homem Duplicado | 2003 | The Double | 2004 | ISBN 0151010404) |
Ensaio sobre a Lucidez | 2004 | Seeing | 2006 | ISBN 0151012385 |
Don Giovanni ou o Dissoluto Absolvido | 2005 | |||
As Intermitências da Morte | 2005 | |||
As Pequenas Memórias | 2006 |
[edit] See also
[edit] Additional information
- Introduction and video of Saramago from "Heroes de los dos bandos" -spanish civil war-
- Interviews with Saramago in video
- Saramago Autobiography on Nobel Prize site
- José Saramago from Pegasos
- Translation of interview with Saramago in El PaÃs - 12-Nov-2005
José Saramago |
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Terra do Pecado • Os Poemas PossÃveis • Provavelmente Alegria • Deste Mundo e do Outro • A Bagagem do Viajante • As Opiniões que o DL teve • O Ano de 1993 • Os Apontamentos • Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia • Objecto Quase • Viagem a Portugal • Baltasar and Blimunda • The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis • The Stone Raft • The History of the Siege of Lisbon • The Gospel According to Jesus Christ • Blindness • All the Names • The Tale of the Unknown Island • The Cave • The Double • Seeing • Don Giovanni ou o Dissoluto Absolvido • As Intermitências da Morte •As Pequenas Memórias |
1976: Bellow | 1977: Aleixandre | 1978: Singer | 1979: Elytis | 1980: MiÅ‚osz | 1981: Canetti | 1982: GarcÃa Márquez | 1983: Golding | 1984: Seifert | 1985: Simon | 1986: Soyinka | 1987: Brodsky | 1988: Mahfouz | 1989: Cela | 1990: Paz | 1991: Gordimer | 1992: Walcott | 1993: Morrison | 1994: Oe | 1995: Heaney | 1996: Szymborska | 1997: Fo | 1998: Saramago | 1999: Grass | 2000: Gao |
Persondata | |
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NAME | Saramago, José de Sousa |
ALTERNATIVE NAMES | |
SHORT DESCRIPTION | Portugese Playwright, Novelist |
DATE OF BIRTH | November 16, 1922 |
PLACE OF BIRTH | Azinhaga, Ribatejo, Portugal |
DATE OF DEATH | |
PLACE OF DEATH |
Categories: Articles lacking sources from November 2006 | All articles lacking sources | Portuguese dramatists and playwrights | Portuguese writers | Portuguese novelists | Nobel laureates in Literature | Portuguese Nobel Prize winners | Portuguese Communist Party members | Portuguese atheists | 1922 births | Living people | Atheists