BBC NEWS 24 124 08 Oct 17:24/17
PORTUGUESE NOVELIST WINS NOBEL PRIZE
Hard-edged but soft-spoken iconoclast
Jose Saramago has become the first
Portuguese-speaking winner of the Nobel
Prize for Literature.
The reclusive 75-year-old, who was born
into a poor family near Lisbon, has
been compared to Gabriel Garcia Marquez
He won for "parables sustained by
imagination, compassion and irony", the
Swedish academy announced.
Mr Saramago has been one of Portugal's
best-selling authors since the 1980s.
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