Jose Saramago

Jose de Sousa Saramago was a Portuguese writer who received the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for parables sustained by imagination, compassion, and irony that continually enable readers to apprehend an elusory reality. His works, some of which can be read as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, and more than two million copies of his books have been sold in Portugal alone, with his work translated into twenty five languages. A proponent of libertarian communism and an atheist, he criticized institutions including the Catholic Church, the European Union, and the International Monetary Fund; after the Government of Portugal removed his novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from a literary prize shortlist as religiously offensive in 1992, he went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, where he lived until his death in 2010.