The Portuguese novelist José Saramago, who explored Portugal’s troubled political identity in a series of novels published over the last four decades and won the Nobel prize for literature in 1998, died today at the age of 87.

His translator Margaret Jull Costa hailed his “wonderful imagination” and his focus on the “dignity of the ordinary man”.

He continued to write until his death, and experimented with a daily blog, Outros Cadernos de Saramago, in 2008, which was published between hard covers as The Notebook in English earlier this year. He was expected to appear at the Edinburgh festival in August to promote his latest book in English, The Elephant’s Journey. His last book, Cain, was published in 2009 with an English translation expected next year.

See: The Guardian.co