José Saramago, without a higher school education, before he is became a journalist, translator and writer, he worked on several different manuals jobs. Traces of these occupations are visible in his work, the largest part of which is published in his mature years when he became one of the most widely read and of the most translated Lusitanian writers. He collaborated as a literary critic of the magazine "Seara Nova", was a member of the editorial board of "Diario de Lisboa" as well as one of the first members of the Association of Portuguese Writers. Since 1976 lives exclusively from literary work, at first as a translator, and then as author.

He wrote plays, short stories, novels, poems, librettos, diaries and travelogues. Published the first novel "Textbook of painting and calligraphy". in 1977. In 1991, he published his most controversial novel "Gospel according to Jesus Christ", a work to which she strongly reacted The Catholic Church and its ranks in the Portuguese government, which is why Saramago, who risked his own life in Portugal twenty years earlier revolution, left Portugal together with his wife.

In 1991, he received the Grande Premio APE for the novel "The Gospel according to Jesus Christ" and the Premio Camões for the whole literary work. He received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

He died in 2010.