Baltasar & Blimunda

josé saramago giovanni pontiero

From the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, a “brilliant...enchanting novel” (New York Times Book Review) of romance, deceit, religion, and magic set in eighteenth-century Portugal at the height of the Inquisition. National bestseller.

When King and Church exercise absolute power what happens to the dreams of ordinary people? In early eighteenth century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost a hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where her mother is condemned and burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by a love of unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Pardere Bartolemeu Lourenco, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the inquisition rages and royalty and religion clash, they pursue his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Genres fictionhistorical fictionclassicsportugalportuguese literatureromancenobel prizeliteraturehistoricalmagical realism

346 pages, Paperback

First published January 1,1982

Literary awards

prémio literário município de lisboa, prémio pen clube português da novelística,

Places

portugal, lisbon, mafra,

This edition

Format: 346 pages, Paperback
Published: September 20, 2001 by Harvill Panthers
ISBN
ASIN: B0DVB2P4BJ
Language: English

Characters More characters

About the author

josé saramago

José de Sousa Saramago (16 November 1922 – 18 June 2010) was a Portuguese novelist and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which have been seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jos%C3%...