And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. When his grandfather suffered a stroke and was to be taken to Lisbon for treatment, Saramago recalled, "He went into the yard of his house, where there were a few trees, fig trees, olive trees.
Jose spent vacations with his grandparents in Azinhaga. In 1924, Saramago's family moved to Lisbon, where his father started working as a policeman.Ī few months after the family moved to the capital, his brother Francisco, older by two years, died. "Saramago," a wild herbaceous plant known in English as the wild radish, was his father's family's nickname, and was accidentally incorporated into his name upon registration of his birth. His parents were Josede Sousa and Maria de Piedade. Saramago was born in 1922 into a family of landless peasants in Azinhaga, Portugal, a small village in the province of Ribatejo some hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon. A proponent of libertarian communism, Saramago came into conflict with some groups, including the Catholic Church. He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhaes and others. His books have been translated into 25 languages. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor.
Jose Saramago was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, playwright and journalist. Awards-Noble Prize Portuguese PEN Club Award.Where-Lanzarote, Spain (Canary Islands).The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers-among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears-through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing.Ī magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses-and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one.
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