Our Word Is Our Weapon Selected Writings

Jos� Saramago was born on November 16, 1922. He spent most of his childhood on his parent's farm, except while attending school in Lisbon. Before devoting himself exclusively to writing novels in 1976, he worked as a draftsman, a publisher's reader, an editor, translator, and political commentator for Diario de Lisboa. He is indisputably Portugal's best-known literary figure and his books have been translated into more than 25 languages. Although he wrote his first novel in 1947, he waited some 35 years before winning critical acclaim for work such as the Memorial do Convento. His works include The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of…  More the Siege of Lisbon, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and Blindness. At age 75, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 for his work in which "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony, continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality." He died from a prolonged illness that caused multiple organ failure on June 18, 2010 at the age of 87.  Less

Ana Carrigan worked in film and video in El Salvador and Nicaragua throughout the 1980s. She is the author of two definitive books on El Salvador and Colombia: "Salvador Witness, The Life and Calling of Jean Donovan" and "The Palace of Justice: A Colombian Tragedy". She is a freelance reporter and an editorial contributor to "The Nation" and "In These Times". She reports from Colombia for "The Irish Times" and "The Sunday Boston Globe". Carrigan lives in New York City and is currently writing a memoir for Seven Stories Press.