by José Saramago · ALFAGUARA · tapa blanda · ISBN 9788420460581
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In 'Memorial del convento', José Saramago transports us to 18th-century Portugal, during the reign of John V and the Inquisition. The novel intertwines the king's promise to build a convent in Mafra with the love story between Baltasar, a one-handed soldier, and Blimunda, a woman with magical powers. Together, they defy social and religious conventions, while Baltasar collaborates in the creation of a flying machine, a symbol of both cultured and popular ideals. Saramago's rich and vigorous narrative offers a deep look into popular life and the dreams of a turbulent era.
José de Sousa Saramago was a Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."
