The Portuguese writer, Jose Saramago, an oft-tipped contender who finally won the Nobel Prize for Literature yesterday, came to fame and fortune late in his career.
The works of the 76-year-old novelist and poet, who mixes magical realism with hard-edged political comment, have been translated into 25 languages and he is indisputably Portugal's best-known literary figure. He is the first writer in Portuguese to receive the world's most prized literary award.
Mr Saramago wrote his first novel in 1947 but had to wait some 35 years before winning critical acclaim with works such as the Memorial do Convento - a fantasy about two lovers trying to escape the Inquisition in a flying machine.
Mr Saramago has continued to turn a sharp, critical eye on Portugal's history, its assumptions and beliefs.
"He looks at events and heroes ignored in our past and shows that fiction is capable of rewriting history, that the official version is not the only one," said Prof Carlos Reis, of the University of Coimbra.
A member of Portugal's unrepentant Communist Party, Mr Saramago was born into a poor rural family in the southern Alentejo region on November 16th, 1922. Too poor to pay for university, his first job was as a metalworker. He attributes his sympathy for the underdog - his characters include chambermaids, peasants and victims of persecution - to his humble roots.
His work has brought him more than a dozen literary prizes over the past decade and a half, including the 1995 Camoes Prize, the Portuguese-speaking community's most prestigious literary award.
Despite his Communist beliefs, Mr Saramago says he does not write to serve ideology. Married to a Spanish journalist, he lives in Lanzarote in the Canary Islands.