Book description
What happens when the facts of history are replaced by the mysteries
of love?
When Raimundo Silva, a lowly proof-reader 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.
Born in Portugal in 1922, José Saramago was one of the most
important writers of his generation. He was in his fifties when he came
to prominence as a novelist with the publication of
Baltasar & Blimunda
. A huge body of work followed, which included plays, poetry, short
stories, non-fiction and over a dozen novels, including
Blindness
which was made into an acclaimed film. He has been translated into more
than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. He died on 18 June 2010, shortly after the Portuguese
publication of
Cain
.
