Balthasar & Blimunda

 In early eighteenth-century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost his left 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 burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by love of an unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the Crown and the Church clash, they purse his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Review: A mighty novel, variously bawdy, elevated, angry and tender, combining erudition, comedy, heresy, surreal science fiction and countless good stories. -- Robert Farren * Sunday Independent *

Original and brilliant...Lovers of Marquez and magical realism will be enchanted by the wonders of this novel, for the colour and vivacity of Saramago's imagination inspires and entertains. -- Kate Figes * Sunday Times *

Jose Saramago affirms the simple truths as only a writer of rare stature can. -- Christopher Wordsworth * Guardian *