Saramago has produced more than thirty works, including poems, essays, plays, and novels. In almost all of these one finds a serious author attempting to come to terms with the illusory reality and encouraging others to join him in this task. His lofty goal and sincere attempts have won him many awards including the Premio Cidade de Lisboa 1980, Premio PEN Club Portugues 1983 and 1984, Premio da Critica da Associacao Portuguesa 1986, Grande Premio de Romance e Novela 1991, Premio Vida Literaria 1993, and the Premio Camoes 1995.

Blindness, which won the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, thematically bears significant links to the writer's previous works.

The poems published in O Ano de 1993 ("The Year 1993," 1975) take as their subject matter the same concept of the plagueridden cities as a backdrop for social collapse. The two works, however, are different in that the epidemic and its horrible consequences in Blindness come nowhere close to...