After graduating, he worked as a car mechanic for two years. At this time Saramago had acquired a taste for reading and started to frequent a public library in Lisbon in his free time. He married Ilda Reis in 1944. Their only daughter, Violante, was born in 1947. By this time he was working in the Social Welfare Service as a civil servant. Later he worked at the publishing company "Estúdios Cor" and as a translator, then as a journalist. He was assistant editor of the newspaper "Diário de Notícias", a position he had to leave after the democratic revolution in 1974.