PAULO JOSÉ MIRANDA
[Saramago Prize 1999 – ‘Still Life’]

It was in a telephone booth in southern Turkey that he received the news of the distinction. Paulo José Miranda, the first winner of the José Saramago Prize, lived outside Portugal for so many years that he is, even today, for many people, an author to be discovered. With the prize money he offered a film camera that led to other awards, one of them at the Indie Lisboa festival. He feels more like a reader than a writer and it is philosophy that he turns to to expand the boundaries of his lack of knowledge. It was his connection to music that made him write the award-winning novel.

HEIRS OF SARAMAGO
Eleven award-winning writers, eleven films

The José Saramago Literary Prize, created a year after Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature, celebrates the talent of authors under forty years old.
They are the ‘Herdeiros de Saramago’, protagonists of this documentary series written by Carlos Vaz Marques and directed by Graça Castanheira.
Eleven very different voices, from different origins, with one link in common: the literary recreation of the Portuguese language.
Closely following each of these writers (in Portugal, Brazil and Angola), here is an intimate and affective portrait of some of the most prominent voices in Saramago’s language.