Jose Saramago (1922- ) was born in Azinhaga, in the inland Ribatejo region of Portugal, but his family moved to the seaside capital of Lisbon when he was still a child. His parents were not wealthy, so he acquired a secondary education in a vocational school, training to become a mechanic. Saramago nonetheless found time to read widely and worked only briefly as a mechanic before progressing through various newspaper jobs—from clerical worker, to production assistant, proofreader, and newspaper columnist. After the democratic revolution of 1974 deposed Portugal’s right-wing dictatorship, Saramago became adjunct editor of the major Lisbon newspaper Diário de Notícias (Daily News). Meanwhile, his literary career began unspectacularly, including one novel, two collections of verse, and four volumes of journalistic writing, none of which attracted much attention. It was only after being dismissed from his job at the Diário de Notícias in 1975, in the wake of a counter-revolutionary coup, that he took up his writing career in earnest. He produced a collection of short stories and a second novel before writing a third, critically acclaimed, novel, Levantado do Chão (1980; untranslated, Raised from the Ground). Similar acclaim and greater commercial success followed for subsequent novels, including Memorial do Convento (1982; Baltasar and Blimunda, 1987), the work that launched him on a series of critical and commercial triumphs.
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