The History of the Siege of Lisbon [Paperback]

Jose Saramago (Author), Giovanni Pontiero (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1, 1998

In this “ingenious” novel (New York Times) by “one of Europe’s most original and remarkable writers” (Los Angeles Times), a proofreader’s deliberate slip opens the door to romance-and confounds the facts of Portugal’s past. Translated by Giovanni Pontiero.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

"If proofreaders were given their freedom and did not have their hands and feet tied by a mass of prohibitions more binding than the penal code, they would soon transform the face of the world, establish the kingdom of universal happiness, giving drink to the thirsty, food to the famished, peace to those who live in turmoil, joy to the sorrowful ... for they would be able to do all these things simply by changing the words ..." The power of the word is evident in Portuguese author José Saramago's novel, The History of the Siege of Lisbon. His protagonist, a proofreader named Raimundo Silva, adds a key word to a history of Portugal and thus rewrites not only the past, but also his own life.

Brilliantly translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero, The History of the Siege of Lisbon is a meditation on the differences between historiography, historical fiction, and "stories inserted into history." The novel is really two stories in one: the reimagined history of the 1147 siege of Lisbon that Raimundo feels compelled to write and the story of Raimundo's life, including his unexpected love affair with the editor, Maria Sara. In Saramago's masterful hands, the strands of this complex tale weave together to create a satisfying whole. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

Portuguese novelist Saramago (The Stone Raft, LJ 2/15/95) is fascinated by how history, often constructed from the slightest shreds, fails to acknowledge the reality of unavailable evidence. When proofreader Raimundo Silva dares to falsify a statement in a history text?namely, that Galician warriors conquered Lisbon from the Moors in 1147 without the help of returning Crusaders?instead of losing his job, he gains the respect of his supervisor and begins an affair with her. She encourages him to recast the event as a novel. Soon he is rooting for a Moor over the Archbishop of Braga and suspecting that there is more Moorish than Aryan Christian blood in the modern Portuguese nation. With its paragraph-long sentences and page-long paragraphs, this panoramic tale of daring and timidity challenges readers to consider the sprawling no man's land where fiction and history merge.?Jack Shreve, Allegany Community Coll., Cumberland, Md.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 324 pages
• Publisher: Mariner Books; Tra edition (September 1, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156006243
• ISBN-13: 978-0156006248
• Product Dimensions: 8 x 5.4 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (37 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #763,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A book about the pleasures of writing and reading, July 3, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (Paperback)

This is a beautiful book and I am surprised at the poor reviews here. What a wonderful way with language Saramago has! A book that is, in its very essence, a reflection on language and writing. Its cast of characters include a proofreader, books that have been written, the narrator (is he then the ultimate writer?) and of course we, the readers who, through Saramago's genius, become an intimate part of the novel. And what a brilliant idea that history can be revised by changing the way it is written! Could one perhaps conclude then that the exquisite love affair between the proofreader and the woman at the publishing house is really a love affair between the author and the reader?

20 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Work of Genius--An Altogether New Form of Fiction, January 20, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (Hardcover)

I'm not one of those people who throws around words like brilliant and genius. But.

Saramago seems to me to have created a new form of writing here. The language is astonishing, exhilarating, its twists and turns some kind of sorcerer's spell. A mischievous, laughing conjurer of irony. His frequent asides to the reader, abashed corrections of his own turns of phrase--I don't know, maybe this turns off some people, but it drew me ever further into the labyrinthine and quite sly workings of the narrative. Saramago is doing something unprecedented here. I'd say he's reinvented the English language itself--but then I remember that the novel was written in Portuguese and the translation I read probably provided only a shadow of the glee that explodes from the original.

I can't believe some readers seem to have found the book repetitive or silly or boring. For me it opened new vistas and showed that a literary genius can still create something miraculous and new.

The day after I started reading the book, it was announced that Saramago had won the Nobel Prize. Then I learned that he is a leading Portuguese communist, and that made me even happier. Then the Vatican issued a stinging denunciation of the Nobel committee for giving the prize to an atheist. Saramago held a news conference and said he'd sooner give up the prize than renounce his atheism. So not only is he an innovator on a par with the greatest artists--but he's one of us, a worker, one of the few remaining artists who refuses to sell out, renounce his class, or let bourgeois norms dictate his art.

Reading The History of the Siege of Lisbon was like drinking down a bracing antidote to the deadly dreck that usually passes for literature.

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Once you get past the style..., March 13, 2003

By 

Mark Thornburg (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The History of the Siege of Lisbon (Paperback)

If you can handle a reworking of the concept of 'punctuation' as we know it, Saramago's History of the Siege of Lisbon is well worth reading. It's not easy, by any stretch of the imagination: dialogue becomes a single block of text, single paragraphs go on for pages with no breaks and often without a period, and the whole concept of 'run-on sentence' is mostly ignored.

But it adds an incredible flow to this book. Based on a fairly simple premise--adding a single word to a history to change the entire course of the story--the book rises above plot, due in large part to the aforementioned style. Once you get used to it, the dialogue feels completely natural, not forced at all, and the sub-story of love between the proofreader and his editor falls into place perfectly. The characters are well developed to a fault, and by the end of the novel, you feel like you know them on a personal basis.

And it's got a two-page discussion of the beauty of toast. How can you not be fascinated? ("...it is so perfect and crunchy golden brown that one thinks one could go without the butter entirely, but you'd be a fool, only a fool would forego the butter...")

Overall, it took me a solid two weeks to finish this book, but it was worth my time: I completely understand why Saramago won the Nobel Prize.