The Resume

(November 16, 1922-June 18, 2010)
Born in Azinhaga, Portugal
Wrote the novels 'Baltasar and Blimunda' (1982), 'The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis' (1986), 'The Stone Raft' (1986), 'The History of the Seige of Lisbon' (1989), 'The Gospel According to Jesus Christ' (1991), 'Blindness' (1995), 'All the Names' (1997), 'The Tale of the Unknown Island' (1997), 'The Cave' (2001), 'The Double' (2003), 'Death with Interruptions' (2005) and 'Cain' (2009)
Won the Nobel Prize in Literature (1998)

Why he might be annoying:

His books often featured page-long sentences.
Critic Harold Bloom said of his lifelong communism, 'It baffles me why the man can’t grow up politically. In 2007, to be a Portuguese Stalinist means you’re simply not living in the real world.'
He denounced the European Union, but ran (unsuccessfully) for the European parliament.
He was a self-proclaimed pessimist who declared, 'Language is dying almost every day, culture is dying every day.'
He compared the actions of the Israeli army in Palestine to the Nazi death camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald and declared, 'The Jews are unworthy of any more sympathy for their sufferings during the second World War.'

Why he might not be annoying:

He went into exile in Spain's Canary Islands after the Portuguese government blocked 'The Gospel According to Jesus Christ' from being nominated for the European Literary Prize on the grounds that its depiction of Jesus as a fallible human being insulted the Catholic community.
He was the first Portuguese language writer to win the Nobel Prize in Literature.
During his Nobel Prize acceptance speech, he praised his grandfather as 'the wisest man I ever knew.'
Although disdainful of his politics, Bloom did say, 'Saramago for the last 25 years has stood his own with any novelist of the Western world.'

Credit: C. Fishel

Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

• C. Fishel's Profiles [Series 29]
• Entertainment Weekly's 100 Best Books [1983-2008] (Ranked: 12)
• Exiles
• I am an Anti-Semite
• I am an Atheist
• I am Portuguese
• I Died in 2010 (Ranked: 87)
• I Had Pneumonia
• I Married in 1988
• I Sought Political Office
• I Write Bildungsroman
• I'm a Communist
• Nobel Prize for Literature
• NPR's 100 Best Literary Characters of the 20th Century [Authors - 2002] (Ranked: 78)
• Profiles 29251-29500 (Ranked: 29281)
• We Died on the Same Day (Ranked: 20100618)

Year In Review:

In 2023, Out of 37 Votes: 64.86% Annoying
In 2022, Out of 4 Votes: 0% Annoying
In 2021, Out of 5 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
In 2019, Out of 22 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2018, Out of 242 Votes: 64.88% Annoying
In 2017, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
In 2015, Out of 10 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2014, Out of 26 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
In 2013, Out of 24 Votes: 54.17% Annoying
In 2012, Out of 55 Votes: 76.36% Annoying
In 2011, Out of 7 Votes: 71.43% Annoying
In 2010, Out of 120 Votes: 70.0% Annoying