José de Sousa Saramago, 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright, journalist and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a permanent part of the Western canon".[2]

Awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature,[3] more than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages.[4][5] He founded the National Front for the Defence of Culture (Lisbon, 1992) with Freitas-Magalhães and others. A proponent of libertarian communism,[6] Saramago came into conflict with some groups, such as the Catholic Church. Saramago was an atheist who defended love as an instrument to improve the human condition.
In 1992, the Portuguese government, under Prime Minister Aníbal Cavaco Silva, ordered the removal of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ from the European Literary Prize's shortlist, claiming the work was religiously offensive. Disheartened by this political censorship of his work, Saramago went into exile on the Spanish island of Lanzarote, upon which he resided until his death in 2010.[8]the time of his death, Saramago was married to Spanish journalist Pilar del Rio, and had a daughter from a previous marriage.[9] The European Writers’ Parliament came about as a result of a joint proposal by Saramago and Orhan Pamuk; Saramago was expected to speak as the guest of honour at the EWP however he died before its opening ceremony in 2010.[10]
Early and middle life
Saramago was born in 1922 into a family of landless peasants in Azinhaga, Portugal, a small village in Ribatejo Province some hundred kilometers northeast of Lisbon.[

His parents were José de Sousa and Maria de Piedade.
"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.[8] 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.

He spent vacations with his grandparents in Azinhaga. 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.

And he went one by one, embracing the trees and crying, saying good-bye to them because he knew he would not return. To see this, to live this, if that doesn't mark you for the rest of your life," Saramago said, "you have no feeling."[11] Although Saramago was a good pupil, his parents were unable to afford to keep him in grammar school, and instead moved him to a technical school at age 12. After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. Later he worked as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, a position he had to leave after the democratic revolution in 1974.[8]
After a period of working as a translator he was able to support himself as a writer. Saramago married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only child, Violante, was born in 1947.[8] In 1986 he met the Spanish journalist Pilar del Rio. They married in 1988 and remained together until his death in June 2010. Pilar Del Río is the official translator of Saramago's books into Spanish.

Saramago did not achieve widespread recognition and acclaim until he was sixty, with the publication of his fourth novel, Memorial do Convento (literally, Memoir of the Convent). A baroque tale set during the Inquisition in 18th-century Lisbon, it tells of the love between a maimed soldier and a young clairvoyant, and of a renegade priest's heretical dream of flight. The novel's translation in 1988 as Baltasar and Blimunda, by Giovanni Pontiero, brought Saramago to the attention of an international readership.[8][12] This novel won the Portuguese PEN Club Award.
He became a member of the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969 and remained so until the end of his life.[13] Saramago was also an atheist[14] and self-described pessimist.[15] His views have aroused considerable controversy in Portugal, especially after the publication of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.[16] Members of the country's Catholic community were outraged by Saramago's representation of Jesus and particularly God as fallible, even cruel human beings. Portugal's conservative government, then led by prime minister Cavaco Silva, would not allow Saramago's work to compete for the European Literary Prize, arguing

لا يعرف متى مات والديه لكن اهم حدث في حياته على ما يبدو موت اخاه وهو في سن 4 سنه.

مجهول الطفولة.