The Notebook, By José Saramago

We are the world – not a herd of cattle

José Saramago's collected blog entries from September 2008 to November 2009 show a writer who lived for writing, and who never tired of raging against the inequities of the world.

His description of George W Bush as a "cowboy who has inherited the world and mistaken it for a herd of cattle" may sound elitist – which is the kind of charge brought by Bush's supporters against his critics – but Saramago was more than just a provider of amusing soundbites. Whether trying to rouse the Left to action or commemorating the souls lost during the Spanish Civil War, he was a principled man who refused to lie down.