José Saramago

In 1944, he married Ilda Reis, a typist with the Railway Company, with whom he had a daughter – Violante dos Reis Saramago in 1947. The relationship, however, broke after 26 years in 1970.

He met Pilar del Rio, a Spanish journalist, in 1986, and married her in 1988. Currently, she is responsible for translating his books into Spanish.

In order to inspire young budding writers, the biennial Premio Literario Jose Saramago (or Jose Saramago Literary Prize) was started in 1999.

After completing his education, he took up various jobs, such as car mechanic, metalworker, translator, journalist, and assistant editor of a newspaper, before taking up writing full-time.

In 1947, he released his first novel, ‘Land of Sin’, which was originally titled ‘The Widow’ but changed by the publisher in the hope of making more business.

He went to write another novel ‘The Skylight’ but wasn’t published and penned a few pages of another one which was later canceled.

He became jobless in 1949 and found employment at a metal company. However, in late 1950, he took up the job of a production manager at a publishing company, ‘Estudios Cor’.

To further contribute to his family finances, he started translating in 1955, which he continued till 1981. Some of the popular writers he translated included Raymond Bayer, Jean Cassou, Tolstoi, Henri Focillon, and Par Lagerkvist.

His novel ‘Raised from the Ground’ was awarded with the ‘City of Lisbon Prize’.

He won the Portuguese PEN Club Award for his novel ‘Baltasar and Blimunda’.

His novel ‘The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis’ was honored with the Britain’s Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

He received the Camoes Prize in 1995.

In 1998, he became the first ever Portuguese language writer to be honored with the prestigious Nobel Prize for Literature.

The word ‘Saramago’, which literally means ‘wild radish’ in Portuguese, was actually his father’s nickname, and was accidentally added on his birth certificate and hence, became his surname.