BALTASAR AND BLIMUNDA - Harvill

At the heart of this novel of rich fantasy laid in early eighteenth-century Portugal is the love between Baltasar, a soldier who lost a hand in the wars, and Blimunda whose mother died at the hands of the Inquisition. Also the scholar priest Padre Bartolomeu, whose dream it is to invent a flying machine, despite the risks of upsetting theological apple carts, a particularly dangerous thing to do at that time. Their story forms a counterpoint with that of the solemn King Joao V and his earnest spouse, Dona Maria, whose combined efforts in their austere bedchamber have failed to produce a male heir until Heaven is allowed to intervene. Around these characters Saramago spins an enchanting tale, which blends limpid historical reality with a rich vein of imagination, to produce, in the words of the New York Times, a romance and an adventure, a rumination on royalty and religion in eighteenth-century Portugal and a bitterly ironic comment on the uses of power.