WRITER

José Saramago

1922 - 2010

Photo of José Saramago

Icon of person José Saramago

José de Sousa Saramago (European Portuguese: [ʒuˈzɛ ðɨ ˈsozɐ sɐɾɐˈmaɣu]; 16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant." More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of José Saramago has received more than 1,616,309 page views. His biography is available in 108 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 103 in 2019). José Saramago is the 89th most popular writer (up from 98th in 2019), the 5th most popular biography from Portugal (up from 7th in 2019) and the most popular Portuguese Writer.

José Saramago is a Portuguese novelist, playwright, and poet. He is most famous for his novels The Stone Raft, Blindness, and The Double.

Memorability Metrics

  • 1.6M

    Page Views (PV)

  • 81.25

    Historical Popularity Index (HPI)

  • 108

    Languages Editions (L)

  • 12.90

    Effective Languages (L*)

  • 3.71

    Coefficient of Variation (CV)

Among WRITERS

Among writers, José Saramago ranks 89 out of 7,302Before him are Miyamoto Musashi, Isaac Asimov, Daniel Defoe, Knut Hamsun, Pablo Neruda, and Giorgio Vasari. After him are Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Henry David Thoreau, Jack London, Toni Morrison, Erich Maria Remarque, and Emily Brontë.

Most Popular Writers in Wikipedia

Go to all Rankings

Contemporaries

Among people born in 1922, José Saramago ranks 2Before him is Yitzhak Rabin. After him are Pier Paolo Pasolini, Joan Fuster, Christopher Lee, Stan Lee, Norodom Sihanouk, Judy Garland, Franjo Tuđman, Pierre Cardin, Thomas Kuhn, and Boutros Boutros-Ghali. Among people deceased in 2010, José Saramago ranks 1After him are J. D. Salinger, Lech Kaczyński, Leslie Nielsen, Gloria Stuart, Tony Curtis, Ronnie James Dio, Benoit Mandelbrot, Bobby Farrell, Dennis Hopper, Claude Chabrol, and Éric Rohmer.

Others Born in 1922

Go to all Rankings

Others Deceased in 2010

Go to all Rankings

In Portugal

Among people born in Portugal, José Saramago ranks 5 out of 633Before him are Ferdinand Magellan (1480), Vasco da Gama (1460), Bartolomeu Dias (1450), and Anthony of Padua (1195). After him are Cristiano Ronaldo (1985), António de Oliveira Salazar (1889), António Guterres (1949), Prince Henry the Navigator (1394), Pedro Álvares Cabral (1467), Fernando Pessoa (1888), and Luís de Camões (1524).

Among WRITERS In Portugal

Among writers born in Portugal, José Saramago ranks 1After him are Fernando Pessoa (1888), Luís de Camões (1524), Denis of Portugal (1261), José Maria de Eça de Queirós (1845), Judah Leon Abravanel (1460), Gil Vicente (1465), João de Barros (1496), Camilo Castelo Branco (1825), Luís Fróis (1532), Almeida Garrett (1799), and Tomé Pires (1468).