Marcello Gonçalves

José de Sousa Saramago (1922-2010) was a Nobel Prize-winning Portuguese author. Born in 1922 in Azinhagada, a small village north of Lisbon, he wrote novels such as *Blindness*, *Seeing*, and *The Double*. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998. His novel *Blindness* was adapted into a film in 2008. He died of leukemia on June 18, 2010, in Tías, Spain, where he spent his final years. Two days later, after a ceremony in Lisbon attended by tens of thousands, his ashes were scattered in his birth and death cities. Portugal declared two days of mourning following Saramago's death.