José Saramago the Nobel Prize winning writer died in Lanzarote yesterday aged 87. The message on the José Saramago Foundation website was that he had died of organ failure following a long illness. The body of José Saramago was laid in an open casket in the library of the Saramago Foundation in Tías, surrounded by thousands of books and candles he was visited by his family, friends and associates to say a last goodbye on Friday evening.
Saramago’s funeral will be held today at 13:00 in Lisbon in Portugal after the ceremony his body will be cremated with half the ashes laid in his native town of Azinhaga and the other ashes transported back to Lanzarote to be buried in the writer’s garden next to his olive tree where he wanted to rest watching the Atlantic.
José Saramago moved to Lanzarote with his wife and Spanish journalist Pilar del Río in the early 1990’s when the Portuguese government refused his controversial novel “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ” to compete for a literary prize. He was adopted as a son of the island in a ceremony at the Jameos del Agua on the 19th December 1997 and his death is a sad loss for Lanzarote.
The Cabildo de Lanzarote have decreed three days of official mourning in honour of his memory.
For more information about the life and works of José Saramago please read this New York Times article published by Fernanda Eberstadt.
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