José Saramago dies at 87

José Saramago, a Portuguese writer, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998, died Friday at his home in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands. He was 87. He was the first Portuguese-language writer to win the Nobel Prize. He was born in 1922 in the village of Azinhaga and was raised by his maternal grandparents. Since his family was so poor, he was forced to leave grammar school at age 12 and start training as a car mechanic. His first novel was published when he was 23, but he became a full-time writer only in his late 50s.

New York Times Obituary by Fernanda Eberstadt

Books by José Saramago in our library