Nobel Prize Winner Jose Saramago Dies

Jose Saramago, the first Portugeses language winner of the Nobel Prize, has died after a long illness. His first novel, Country of Sin, was published in 1947. For the next 18 years, he worked as a journalist, publishing travel and poetry books. In the 1980s, Saramago became one of Portugal's best selling novelists. Perhaps his most known novel is Blindness . He has said that it addresses the world's "blindness of rationality." In the novel, the population of an unknown city is struck by a mysterious blindness. Chaos and societial breakdown ensues. The novel was made into a 2008 film starring Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo. Saramago critized his fellow man: "we're rational beings, but we don't behave rationally. If we did, there'd be no starvation in the world." He was outspoken and blunt, and his writing style was critized for its wordiness and lack of punctuation. His strong support ofCommunism also earned him criticism. His other books include: Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Stone Raft, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.