Portugal advanced to the quarterfinals today with a 2-1 win over Denmark; they will join Germany who defeated the Netherlands 2-1 in advancing from the dreaded group of death.
Saramago was awarded the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, which in recent years has gone to Turkish novelist Orhan Pamuk and the late British playwright Harold Pinter.
The Portuguese writer was a communist politically which forced him to live a portion of his life in exile in the Canary Islands, joining the likes of the late Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet, who lived in Russia, and the late American novelist William Burroughs, who lived in Morocco (but lived the later years of his life in Lawrence, Kansas) as writers who lived in exile for either political or personal reasons.
Saramago's most famous novels include "Baltasar and Blimunda" (1982), "The Gospel According to Jesus Christ" (1991), which was very controversial, and "Blindness" (1997).
Here is his quote:
"As citizens, we all have an obligation to intervene and become involved_ it's the citizen who changes things."
