Saramago was a member of the Communist Party of Portugal, [10] and in his late years defined himself as a proponent of libertarian communism. [7] He ran in the 1989 Lisbon local election as part of the "Coalition For Lisbon," and was elected alderman presiding officer of the Municipal Assembly of Lisbon. [30] Saramago was also a candidate of the Democratic Unity Coalition in all elections of the European Parliament from 1989 to 2009, though he ran for positions of which it was thought he had no possibility of winning. [30] He was a critic of European Union (EU) and International Monetary Fund (IMF) policies. [9]

All of Saramago’s fiction was about this world—about real people but also animals, about real suffering, about solidarity, about changing circumstances in a humane way, about ethical responsibility. This is why his thoughts and literature could be transformed into a Universal Charter of Duties and Obligations of the Individuals 4 that has already been submitted to the United Nations since, in one of his Nobel Prize lectures, Saramago suggested that the Universal Declaration of Human Rights is not sufficient to guide humanity. In his last Notebook of Lanzarote, only recently discovered and published in 2018, Saramago says that after Blindness, something changed in him, especially regarding literature and its importance in life. He said that he was no longer interested in talking about literature, that he even doubted if it was possible to talk about literature at all. He left those reflections unexplained. But perhaps he felt that writing was no longer enough. Before, during, and shortly after the Portuguese Revolution, writing had certainly been a “desire for freedom” on his part, an act of liberating humanity. But after Blindness, I think he began to feel that literature was excessively strangled by the regime of genres, narratives, clichés, personal vanities, commercial and cultural politics. a b "Metacritic: 2008 Film Critic Top Ten Lists". Metacritic. Archived from the original on January 2, 2009 . Retrieved January 11, 2009. After the democratic revolution in 1974, on 9 April 1975, during the rule of Vasco Gonçalves, Saramago became the assistant director of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, and the editorial line became clearly pro-communist. A group of 30 journalists - half the editorial staff - handed the board a petition calling for the editorial line to be revised and for it to be published. A plenary was called and, following an angry intervention by Saramago, 24 journalists were expelled, accused of being right-wingers. After the Coup of 25 November 1975 that put an end to the communist PREC, Saramago, in turn, was fired from the newspaper. [12]He was also a supporter of Iberian Federalism. In a 2008 press conference for the filming of Blindness he asked, in reference to the Great Recession, "Where was all that money poured on markets? Very tight and well kept; then suddenly it appears to save what? lives? no, banks." He added, "Marx was never so right as now", and predicted "the worst is still to come." [37] Awards and accolades [ edit ] The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside. Kilday, Gregg (2006-11-01). " 'Blindness' gains Focus for int'l sales". The Hollywood Reporter. The Nielsen Company. Archived from the original on 2007-09-30 . Retrieved 2007-06-18. Things have not improved since the novel’s publication in 1995. Covid-19, it has been pointed out, is inseparable from climate change, from the Anthropocene, or, more precisely, the Capitalocene. Many thinkers view global warming, growing epidemic threats, migrations, social differences, political unrest, and most of our current wars as a consequence of capitalism and colonialism. Saramago underlined many of these interrelations long before the Nobel Prize. But with Blindness, it seems to me, he truly became a Tiresias of our crumbling Western Civilization. Sadly, only the few listen. Rewriting History

Saramago's English language translator, Margaret Jull Costa, paid tribute to his "wonderful imagination," calling him "the greatest contemporary Portuguese writer". [23] Saramago continued his writing until his death. His most recent publication, Claraboia, was published posthumously in 2011. Saramago had suffered from pneumonia a year before his death. Having been thought to have made a full recovery, he had been scheduled to attend the Edinburgh International Book Festival in August 2010. [23]

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Conditions degenerate further as an armed clique gains control over food deliveries, subjugating their fellow internees and exposing them to violent assault, rape, and deprivation. Faced with starvation, internees battle each other and burn down the asylum, only to discover that the army has abandoned the asylum, after which the protagonists join the throngs of nearly helpless blind people outside who wander the devastated city and fight one another to survive. Honeycutt, Kirk (2008-05-18). "Film Review: Blindness". The Hollywood Reporter. Nielsen Company. Archived from the original on 2008-05-17 . Retrieved 2008-05-20. In this framework, Saramago strove to achieve a different discourse, one less beholden to patriarchal and traditionally ideological constraints, one that could rewrite and reshape our knowledge of history via the medium of poetical expression, one that demonstrated that meaning itself is heterogeneous and determined by sociohistorical factors. In an interview published in 1998, he said that his attempt to rewrite history was nothing less than an “attempt of an all-including description,” an attempt to “tell everything,” that is, an attempt to include all excluded voices and perspectives in a decolonized, non-hierarchical manner. Allegory and Essay

Garces, Raul (2007-09-20). "Glover Films Blindness in Uruguay". ABC News. The Walt Disney Company. Archived from the original on March 18, 2009 . Retrieved 2008-03-11. During the Second Intifada, while visiting Ramallah in March 2002, Saramago said that "what is happening in Palestine is a crime we can put on the same plane as what happened at Auschwitz ... A sense of impunity characterises the Israeli people and its army. They have turned into rentiers of the Holocaust." [4] In an essay he wrote expanding on his views, Saramago wrote of Jews: "educated and trained in the idea that any suffering that has been inflicted ... on everyone else ... will always be inferior to that which they themselves suffered in the Holocaust, the Jews endlessly scratch their own wound to keep it bleeding, to make it incurable, and they show it to the world as if it were a banner." [34] Critics of these statements charged that they were antisemitic. [10] [35] Six months later, Saramago clarified. "To have said that Israel's action is to be condemned, that war crimes are being perpetrated – really the Israelis are used to that. It doesn't bother them. But there are certain words they can't stand. And to say 'Auschwitz' there ... note well, I didn't say that Ramallah was the same as Auschwitz, that would be stupid. What I said was that the spirit of Auschwitz was present in Ramallah. We were eight writers. They all made condemning statements, Wole Soyinka, Breyten Breytenbach, Vincenzo Consolo and others. But the Israelis weren't bothered about those. It was the fact that I put my finger in the Auschwitz wound that made them jump." [4]

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Saramago was highly distrusting of the Salazar regime and government, so he joined the Portuguese Communist Party in 1969. To do so was illegal under Salazar’s dictatorship. Within the last few years of Salazar’s rule, Saramago worked for two Lisbon newspapers, Diário de Lisboa and, later, Diário de Nóticias. He lost his job from the latter in 1975 after the new anti-Communist government had come into power. With no hopes of finding another journalistic position, he turned to writing literature and developed his unique writing, consisting of very little punctuation and dialogue within narration. a b c Evans, Julian (28 December 2002). "The militant magician". The Guardian . Retrieved 28 December 2002. National Federation of the Blind Condemns and Deplores the Movie Blindness". National Federation of the Blind. 2008-09-30. Archived from the original on 2008-10-03 . Retrieved 2008-10-01. Maloney, Evan (4 March 2010). "The best advice for writers? Read". The Guardian. London . Retrieved 4 March 2010.