LISBON/MADRID, (Reuters Life!) – Jose Saramago, the Nobel prize winning Portuguese writer who riled authorities with his works melding magical realism and biting political comment, died yesterday at his home on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, aged 87.
Saramago, a card-carrying member of Portugal’s Communist Party who won the Nobel prize in 1998, courted controversy throughout his long career, his works often harshly critical of Portuguese history, conservatism and religion.
The Saramago Foundation said he had died of multiple organ failure after a prolonged illness.
“I think this is a great loss for Portuguese culture,” Prime Minister Jose Socrates told journalists. “His works have made Portugal proud, his death will leave our culture poorer.”
President Anibal Cavaco Silva said that Saramago “will always be a point of reference in our culture.”
Just last year, Saramago angered the Catholic Church when he said at the launch of his last book, “Cain”, that the Bible was “a handbook of bad morals” and a “catalogue of what is worst in human nature”.
His confrontations with Portuguese authorities were frequent, which may help to explain why his popularity was perhaps greater abroad than at home.
“He may have been better known abroad than in Portugal,” said Batista Bastos, a fellow writer.
Saramago went into self-imposed exile in 1992 after the Portuguese government excluded his novel “The Gospel according to Jesus Christ” from its official entry for a literary prize. He had lived in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands since then.
The novel, which depicts Jesus as the son of Joseph, not God, had come under fire from the Vatican and Saramago accused the Portuguese government of censorhip.
Saramago came to fame late in his career but he is indisputably Portugal’s best-known modern literary figure, having been translated into 25 languages.
In 2008, his novel “Blindness” was turned into a hit film by Brazilian director Fernado Meirelles, starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo.
