 After the publication of the book "O Quarto Dia da Criação do Mundo" he was arrested for two months, between December 1939 and February 1940.His agnostic beliefs are reflected on his work, which deals mainly with the nobility of the human condition in a beautiful but ruthless world where God is either absent or nothing but a passive and silent, indifferent creator.The recognition of his work earned him several important awards, as the Montaigne Prize, in 1981, and the first ever Prémio Camões in 1989.