José Saramago was born on 16 November 1922 in Azinhaga. A Portuguese novelist, born into a poor rural family, Saramago worked as a mechanic, a civil servant and a journalist before devoting himself fully to writing in his late fifties. His breakthrough was Baltasar and Blimunda in 1982, and his best-known works include The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Blindness. His novels often combine fantasy with history and social criticism, written in long sentences with unusual punctuation. A communist and atheist, he angered the Portuguese government with his Gospel, after which he moved to the Spanish island of Lanzarote. In 1998 he became the first writer in Portuguese to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
Before and after
- 4 November 1922Howard Carter finds the tomb of Tutankhamun
- 11 November 1922Birth of Kurt Vonnegut
- 14 November 1922Founding of BBC News
- 14 November 1922Birth of Boutros Boutros-Ghali
- 16 November 1922Birth of José Saramago
- 18 November 1922Death of Marcel Proust
- 23 November 1922Birth of Joan Fuster
- 3 December 1922Establishment of Gran Paradiso National Park
- from 6 December 1922 to 29 December 1937Irish Free State
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