José Saramago

José de Sousa Saramago (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese novelist and 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 have been seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today."