LISBON, Portugal — Jose Saramago, who became the first Portuguese-language winner of the Nobel Prize in literature even though his popularity at home was dampened by his unflinching support for communism, blunt manner and sometimes difficult prose style, died Friday.
Saramago, 87, died at his home in Lanzarote, one of Spain’s Canary Islands, of multi-organ failure after a long illness, the Jose Saramago Foundation said. “The writer died in the company of his family, saying goodbye in a serene and placid way,” the foundation said.
Saramago was an outspoken man who antagonized many and moved to the Canary Islands after a public spat in 1992 with the Portuguese government, which he accused of censorship.
His 1998 Nobel accolade was nonetheless widely cheered in his homeland after decades of the award eluding writers of a language used by about 170 million people around the world.
“People used to say about me, ‘He’s good, but he’s a communist.’ Now they say, ‘He’s a communist, but he’s good,’ ” he said in a 1998 interview with The Associated Press.
His first novel — “Terra do Pecado” (“Country of Sin”), published in 1947 — was a tale of peasants in moral crisis. It sold badly but won Saramago enough recognition to allow him to jump from a welder’s shop to a job on a literary magazine.
International critical acclaim came late in his life, starting with his 1982 historical fantasy, “Memorial do Convento,” published in English in 1988 as “Baltasar and Blimunda.”
