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Baltasar and Blimunda

José Saramago

Baltasar and Blimunda
Translated by:
Giovanni Pontiero
Author is from, and story is set in
Portugal

In early eighteenth-century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost his left hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from the auto-da-fe where women are burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by love of an unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the Crown and the Church clash, they purse his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.

Thanks to Daniela from Portugal for this recommendation!

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