What happens when the facts of history are replaced by the mysteries of love?

When Raimundo Silva, a lowly proofreader for a Lisbon publishing house, inserts a negative into a sentence of a historical text, he alters the whole course of the 1147 Siege of Lisbon. Fearing censure he is met instead with admiration: Dr Maria Sara, his voluptuous new editor, encourages him to pen his own alternative history. As his retelling draws on all his imaginative powers, Silva finds - to his nervous delight - that if the facts of the past can be rewritten as a romance then so can the details of his own dusty bachelor present.

A proofreader tinkering with a historical text opens up a world of ambiguity and invention, as he finds the relationship between fact and fiction to be far from clear.

About the Author
Jose Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922, he was in his sixties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago died in June 2010.

Reviews
Marvellous, seriously witty, erotic and edgily surreal -- Lucy Hughes-Hallett * Sunday Times *
Saramago is one of Europe's most original and remarkable writers...his writing is imbued with the spirit of comic enquiry, meditative pessimism and a quietly transforming energy that turns the indefinite into the unforgettable -- Richard Eder * Los Angeles Times *
This cryptic, ingenious novel...is never dull or humourless... No candidate for [the Nobel Prize] has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist who was born in 1922 but was in his mid-50s before he started to publish the fiction that has won him an international reputation -- Edmund White * New York Times *
A book filled with lyrical and intellectual rewards -- Bill Marx * Boston Globe *
This hypnotic tale is a great comic romp through history, language and the imagination * Publishers Weekly *



Book Information
ISBN 9781860467226
Author Jose Saramago
Format Paperback
Page Count 320
Imprint The Harvill Press
Publisher Vintage Publishing
Weight(grams) 500g
Dimensions(mm) 198mm * 129mm * 35mm