Web posted on: Thursday, October 08, 1998 3:16:46 PMEDT

FRANKFURT (CNN) -- Already, life is changing for Jose Saramago, the latest winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Greeted with elated cheers and the crush of newfound fame, the Portuguese writer who mixes magical realism with hard-edged political comment put his success into perspective by remembering his homeland.

"I am personally very happy about this," the Portuguese writer said shortly after learning he had won. "I'm also happy for my country. I would like to stress that, through this, the Portuguese language will reach more people, more readers.

"There have to be ways and means of protecting the (Portuguese) language so that it does not become a museum. The writer's role is to protect it and work with it."

Writers should be poor?

Saramago, 75, found out he had won the prize as he left Frankfurt's book fair, just before he boarded a plane for his home on the Spanish island of Lanzarote. Upon returning to the fair, which had attracted almost 6,700 publishers from 107 different countries, he was greeted with cheers and countless roses.

Saramago then held an impromptu news conference, but reportedly had to abandon it when a crush of reporters surged forward to speak to him.

In its citation of this year's Nobel Prize winner, The Swedish Academy said it gave the award to Saramago for work that "with parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality."

Saramago wins a purse of $985,000. The award will be presented at a ceremony in Stockholm on December 9.

Saramago commented on the money, trying to put it into perspective. "We are so used to the fact that writers should be poor ... You never ask a tennis player or a football player what he is going to do with all the money he earns," he said.

Saramago should also experience a massive boost of sales internationally.

His publisher expressed an overwhelming elation.

"This is all very sudden. I am very shocked," said Jose Oliveira of the Caminho publishing house. "This is wonderful for Portugal as a nation. We have never won a Nobel prize."

European original

Saramago has long been considered a favorite for the prize, as he is indisputably Portugal's best-known literary figure. For many critics and fellow writers, recognition for the author was long overdue. Writer Edmund White told the New York Times recently "No candidate for a Nobel prize has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist."

The Los Angeles Times agreed, its critic saying, "Saramago is one of Europe's most original and remarkable writers."

Saramago wrote his first novel in 1947 but had to wait some 35 years before winning critical acclaim with works such as the "Memorial do Convento" about the building of the convent of Mafra outside Lisbon.

Nine novels written by Saramago since 1977 have become best sellers as well as being hailed by critics as literary masterpieces. His books have been translated into more than 25 languages.

Saramago's parents were farmers and though he went to school in Lisbon, he spent much of his childhood in the countryside.

He has worked as a draftsman, a publisher's reader, an editor, a translator, and a political commentator for the newspaper Diario de Lisboa. He devoted himself exclusively to writing novels since 1976.

The nonconformist writer who is a card-carrying member of Portugal's unreformed Communist Party says his bluntness can sometimes offend. "I am skeptical, reserved, I don't gush, I don't go around smiling, hugging people and trying to make friends," he once said.

The literature prize is one of five established by Alfred Nobel, the 19th century Swedish industrialist and inventor of dynamite. The prizes have been awarded since 1901; a sixth prize, in economics, was started in 1969.

Last year's prize went to Dario Fo, the Italian playwright whose work combines gut-busting comedy with acid social and political commentary. The 1996 winner was the Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, as shy and delicate as Fo is boisterous.

Related story:

• Portugal's Jose Saramago wins Nobel Literature Prize
• CNN Interactive Spanish story of prize
• CNN Interactive Portugese story of prize

Related site:
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• Nobel Prize Internet Archive (unofficial)

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