He does this without much preaching, but via surprised remarks by the naïve narrator, and by the accumulation of observed details. Saramago misses no opportunity to point out the vast chasm between the lifestyle of the rulers and the people, and how the populace are manipulated to be complicit in their own oppression. In the end, it turns out the only escape, at least for the titular characters, is in their connection to each other, defeating even death it appears. But the invention is eventually abandoned as its inventor flees the Inquisition. Even so, in one of those passages of magic realism that lift the generally down-to-earth account, the airship successfully flies our protagonists above the ground. For one thing the only fuel available to it is human wills, captured by Blimunda's powers of insight into people. Its value is only as a political statement, a symbol perhaps of an outdated approach to finding escape from the misery of life on earth.Īnother more scientific approach, the invention of a flying ship by the heretical priest Bartolomeu Lourenco (also an historical figure), helped by Baltasar and Blimunda, conversely is ahead if its time. But of little or no importance to the writer is the convent itself. Much of the plot involves preparations to construct the convent, employing fifty thousand dragooned peasants, including a painfully detailed and exhaustingly brutal effort to bring a needed, huge stone to Mafra, leaving a trail of bloodshed behind it. Its promised founding serves as a motivation-to God presumably-to give the king a son. The Convent of Mafra, an actual and still existing site in Portugal, is something of a MacGuffin in the novel. The title in the author's native tongue, translated literally as Memorial of the Convent, indicates a less romantic theme, although it might mislead others who don't know Saramago into thinking it's a religiously inspiring novel. 'After all, this is a fairy tale,' the novel's unknown narrator says at one point. Yet, despite such dark material, eighteenth-century Portugal is quite a bright and fantastic world as recreated by Saramago. This may confuse some readers once they wade into the pageantry of political leaders, the scheming of religious leaders, and the suffering experienced by the people. The title in English of José Saramago's most acclaimed novel, Baltasar and Blimunda, gives the impression it's a love story, about the love between the soldier who has lost a hand in battle and the girl who has been orphaned by the Inquisition.

Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago