Gonçalo M. Tavares, writer: ‘If a country like the U.S. has 40 million poor people, that country isn’t rich’

The Portuguese author writes compulsively, but he lets his manuscripts sit in a drawer for years. Translated into 70 languages, Saramago once said of him: ‘It’s not natural to write so well. You feel like punching the guy. They’ll give him the Nobel Prize for sure’