Will I love The History Of The Siege Of Lisbon?

In the hands of Jose Saramago, a baroque stylist yet radical thinker, this tale of a reclusive proofreader and the definitive account of a 12th-century battle moves between the most stubborn boundary of all—separating the present from a still vivid past and a place where many of his Portuguese countrymen still live.

I first read this book nearly twenty years ago and have been thinking about it ever since. It’s a relatively simple story, about a bored proofreader who literally rewrites the history of his hometown. But in the hands of a master storyteller like Saramago, the topic takes on a raft of existential questions about history, place, and our relationship to the past.