José Saramago – 20th–21st century Portuguese novelist, author of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Blindness, Nobel Prize laureate in Literature (1998). His signature style features long sentences without conventional punctuation, weaving allegory, irony, and social critique. He became a symbol of literature blurring reality and metaphor.
📚 Blindness (1995) became an international bestseller, an allegory of society’s fragility. 🖋 Before fame, he worked as a mechanic, journalist, and editor. ✨ His style is dubbed “ironic stream of consciousness.” 🌍 Translated worldwide, he is Portugal’s most acclaimed 20th-century novelist. 📖 The Gospel According to Jesus Christ sparked controversy and censorship in Portugal. 🏝 Spent his later years on Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. 🎬 Several films were adapted from his novels, including Blindness (2008). 💡 Blended biblical imagery with political satire. 🏆 Nobel citation praised his “parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony.” 😂 Fun fact: he joked he avoided quotation marks and full stops “because life doesn’t pause where we expect it to.”