Jose Saramago still going strong

Alfonso Daniels writes for the BBC News: Jose Saramago, the Portuguese Nobel Prize laureate, is 86 years old. He recently called Italy's leader, Silvio Berlusconi, "vomit" and compares the Palestinian territories with Auschwitz. And he is, arguably, the best living writer today.

Born in Azinhaga, Portugal, he spends only a few months of the year in his native country. He lives mostly in the Spanish Canary Islands where he has been in symbolic exile since 1992 when the Portuguese government blocked his allegedly heretical novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, from being nominated for a European literary prize.

"I'm a hormonal communist," he says, "my body contains hormones that grow my beard and others that make me a communist. Change, for what? I would be ashamed, I don't want to become someone else."

Although he published his first book in 1947 (and some poems in 1966), he started publishing novels only in 1981 at the age of 59, his first being Journey to Portugal (1981) and rose to world fame with his publication of Balthasar and Blimunda in 1987. He won the Nobel Prize in 1998. Trained as a mechanic, he worked as a civil servant, as a manager of a metal company and in publishing.

He says he has three or four years more to live, maybe less. So he is speeding up his writing. His latest book, El Cuaderno (The Notebook), is a compilation of his popular blog entries. His next novel will be published before the end of the year. "I wrote it very quickly, it's possibly the book that I've written the most enthusiastically. It will have some 200 pages and will contain a surprise," he says. "I can't say any more, not even announce its title or else I would give it away."

BBC