Nobel literature laureate Jose Saramago, who left his native Portugal in a dispute with his country’s government, died on Friday on the Spanish Canary island of Lanzarote at the age of 87, his foundation said.
The author known for his atheist, communist views suffered multiple organ failure after a long illness and was “surrounded by his family” when he died in a “serene and peaceful way,” the Jose Saramago Foundation said in a statement.
Saramago, whose novels include Blindness, about a country whose population loses its sight, had spent several recent periods in hospital with respiratory problems and was suffering from leukemia, the Spanish daily El Mundo said.
His visionary and often surreal novels only found fame when he was in his 60s and he was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1998.
Saramago left Portugal in the early 1990s after the conservative government in power refused to allow his controversial novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to compete for a European literary prize.
He lived on Lanzarote with his wife Pilar del Rio, a Spanish journalist.
“Jose Saramago will remain a reference point in our vast literary oeuvre who should be read and known by generations to come,” said Portuguese President Anibal Cavaco Silva, a right-winger and practicing Catholic.
On Lanzarote, authorities set up a chapel of rest on Friday in the Jose Saramago library near his house and declared three days of mourning for the man the island claimed as an “adopted son.
“He was a very simple and affable man, you would see him walking his dog and going out to buy bread,” local cultural official Jose Antonio Gutierrez said.
A Portuguese air force plane carrying Portuguese Culture Minister Gabriela Canavilhas was to fly to Lanzarote to repatriate the remains of the writer yesterday morning to the country he left behind.
Portugal’s government announced two days of mourning yesterday and today, when Saramago’s body is to be cremated around midday.
In a telegram to Saramago’s widow, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero expressed his “deepest condolences” over the death of the writer “whose words crossed the world” and who “spoke up for the weakest.”
Born to a peasant family in the central village of Azinhaga, Saramago left school at the age of 12 and trained as a locksmith.
Saramago published his first novel in 1947, but his next work, a collection of poems, did not appear until 19 years later.
A member of the Communist Party, which was banned at the time, he took part in the revolution that ousted the Portuguese dictatorship in 1974 and published a second novel in 1977.
His literary career only took off with the publication in 1982, when he was 60, of Baltasar and Blimunda, a historical love story set in 17th-century Portugal.
A self-described pessimist and non-believer, Saramago’s novels — which have sold millions of copies in more than 30 languages — often deal with fantastic scenarios.
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