Author of more than 40 titles, José Saramago was born in 1922, in the village of Azinhaga. The nights spent in the public library of the Palácio Galveias, in Lisbon, were fundamental for its formation. “And it was there, without help or advice, only guided by curiosity and the desire to learn, that my taste for reading developed and refined.”
In 1947 he published his first book, entitled A Viúva, but which, for editorial reasons, came out with the title of Terra do Pecado. Six years later, in 1953, the novel Claraboia, published only after his death, would end.
In the late 1950s, he became responsible for production at Editorial Estúdios Cor, a role he would combine with that of translator, from 1955, and literary critic.
He returns to writing in 1966 with Os Poemas Possíveis.
In 1971 he took up editorial duties at Diário de Lisboa and in April 1975 he was appointed deputy director of Diário de Notícias.
At the beginning of 1976 he moved to Lavre to document his project of writing about landless peasants. Thus was born the novel Levantado do Chão and the way of narrating that characterizes his novelesque fiction.

José Saramago received the Camões Prize in 1995 and the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 (from www.josesaramago.org)