Saramago's novel Baltasar and Blimunda (1982) is considered one of his great achievements. Set during the Inquisition in eighteenth-century Portugal, the book focuses on the attempts by two young characters, the disabled war veteran Baltasar and the visionary Blimunda, to transport themselves to the heavens. Like many of Saramago's works, this novel is praised as an innovative blending on the fantastical and the historical.

Another highly lauded Saramago novel is The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis (1984). The novel tells the story of Ricardo Reis, a poet-physician who returns to Portugal from Rio de Janeiro, his love interests, and the ghost of Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa.

Saramago's controversial novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ (1991) imaginatively and idiosyncratically tells the story of Jesus' life, emphasizing the figure's humanity and portraying God as a bureaucratic character with questionable motives.

Poems of...