“Baltasar and Blimunda” is a book about a king that cannot have children, and he promises to build a monastery if he gets his heir. The promise is made to a monk and it has to be fulfilled to one of the greatest achievements in Portuguese history. The king though knows that the delay of the offspring is not his fault. He had proven it many times in many Christian cells in Lisbon. The queen must have a problem, those Austrian women are so different than the Portuguese…!
“Baltasar and Blimunda” is a book about a king’s soldier that lost his left hand in the battlefield, while defending king’s interests in Spain. It is about his love about a woman that can see. They meet each other under peculiar circumstances, while Inquisition is at its best, throwing a show in Lisbon’s palace square.
The book, as most of Saramago’s books, is telling history in a different and more fictional way. Yes the king existed. Yes the monastery was build due to his request. The reason that it was requested to be built is not clear, but this is only an excuse for the story to be born. Saramago writes in his own distinct style. His philosophical way of thinking and putting things into place is unique and drugs the reader along the way leaving no room for breaks. Te reader grasps every word and holds on to it until the next one comes to free the mind. The humorist fictional prose could be seen as blaspheme by religious or historians, but it is just his own way of telling stories.
Jose Saramago is a Nobelist. The reader can easily understand why…
