The History of the Siege of Lisbon

Through boredom or through a spirit of contradiction, publisher’s proof-reader Raimundo Silva takes it upon himself to insert a negative into a sentence in a history book. The text now asserts that, in 1147, the king reconquered Lisbon from the Saracens without any assistance from the Crusaders. The effects of this minor act of insubordination are surprising. His relationship with his editor, the voluptuous Dr. Maria Sara, is changed and Silva finds himself penning a revised history. As he does, he discovers that not only the past but also the present can be written as romance. Around Silva’s simple act of altering a text, Saramago has constructed one of his most mind-stretching novels. The History of the Siege of Lisbon is written on a canvas broad enough to contain a bitter-sweet love-affair, an investigation into the writing of history, and a parable on life in Portugal under Salazar.