Baltazar, RaquelAmorim, Rita2023-10-132023-10-132017-12http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/28990José Saramago‟s works depict an unfinished and dormant modernity and contribute to a better understanding of the contemporary world, through a local spatiality which soon becomes a social discourse. As stated by the Swedish Academy, Saramago creates “parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [that] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality". The universal theme of social identity does not suppress the historical reference, though it emphasizes the consequences of modernity as a decisive factor for the transformation of the global identity. The questioning of the paradigms of social evolution is associated with the absence of human justice, as well as the exploitation and domination of the modern subject through the decrease of freedom, the psychological imprisonment and ideological alienation.engJosé Saramago, social identity, social awareness, Nobel Prize, modernity, literaturejournal article10.15640/ijll.v5n2a7