Nobel Prize-Winning Portuguese Writer Dies
Photo credit: The New York Times
As a professional novelist, Mr. Saramago was a late bloomer. A first novel, published when he was 23, was followed by 30 years of silence. He became a full-time writer only in his late 50s, after working variously as a garage mechanic, a welfare agency bureaucrat, a printing production manager, a proofreader, a translator and a newspaper columnist. (The New York Times)
José Saramago, released from this mortal coil at 87 years old, told The New York Times in 2007 that his fortune as a writer hinged upon his premature professional demise due to the collapse of Portugal’s Communist-led revolution in 1975. “Being fired was the best luck of my life… It made me stop and reflect. It was the birth of my life as a writer.”
