Author of more than 30 novels, including Fado Alexandrino and The Inquisitors’ Manual, was widely seen as one of the most important voices in modern Portuguese literature

• António Lobo Antunes’s exhilarating novels forced Portugal to confront its darkest moments

António Lobo Antunes, the Portuguese novelist whose dark, polyphonic fiction confronted the traumas of dictatorship, war and Portuguese society, has died aged 83.

Widely regarded as one of the most important Portuguese writers of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, he produced more than 30 novels that reshaped Portuguese writing and made him a perennial contender for the Nobel prize for literature. He received numerous honours, including the Camões prize, the most prestigious award in the Portuguese language, and several major European literary prizes. His death was confirmed by the publisher Dom Quixote.