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The History of the Siege of Lisbon: A Novel Kindle Edition

by José Saramago (Author), Giovanni Pontiero (Translator) Format: Kindle Edition

4.1 132 ratings

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A proofreader realizes his power to edit the truth on a whim, in a “brilliantly original” novel by a Nobel Prize winner (Los Angeles Times Book Review).

Raimundo Silva is a middle-aged, celibate clerk, proofing manuscripts for a respectable publishing house. Fluent in Portuguese, he has been assigned to work on a standard history of the country, and the twelfth-century king who laid siege to Lisbon. In a moment of subversive daring, Raimundo decides to change just one single word of text—a capricious revision that completely undoes the past. When discovered, his insolent disregard for facts appalls his employers—save for his new editor, Maria Sara. She suggests that Rainmundo take his transgressions even further.

Through Rainmundo and Maria’s eyes, what transpires is an alternate view of history and a colorful reinvention of a debatable truth. It’s a serpentine journey through time where past and present converge, fact becomes myth, and fiction and reality blur—especially for Rainmundo and Maria themselves, who begin to find themselves erotically drawn to each other.

“Walter Mitty has nothing on Raimundo Silva . . . this hypnotic tale is a great comic romp through history, language and the imagination.” —Publishers Weekly

Translated by Giovanni Pontiero

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

JOSÉ SARAMAGO (1922–2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, BaltasarandBlimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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 an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Raimundo Silva, proofreader for a Portuguese publishing house, violates the fundamental ethic of his profession by adding the word not to a sentence in a history textbook, so it reads that in 1147 the king of Portugal reconquered Lisbon from the Saracens without any help from the Crusaders. Although the change is caught, and an errata slip added to the book, Silva's supervisor, rather than firing him, asks him to write an alternative history based on his emendation of the text. Like the novels of his soulmates, Rushdie and Garcia M rquez, Saramago's novel is challenging both linguistically and thematically. Sentences snake on for whole paragraphs, the dialogue lacks quotation marks, and the reader moves from the twelfth century to the present and back again, from real event to imagined past. Saramago raises provocative questions about the nature of history and language. Serious readers willing to devote the time the book deserves will be dazzled by Saramago's inventiveness, intelligence, and wit. Offered in a superb translation, it is not to be missed. Nancy Pearl --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

I found the verbal pierce and parry of the two proofreaders' courtship the most persuasive and vivid aspect of the novel. Saramago has a sure sense of the pleasurable danger of seduction, the fear of offending, the wild hope of wooing ... -- The New York Times Book Review, Edmund White --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

A brilliantly amusing metafiction about the instability of history and the reality assumed by fiction, from the acclaimed Portuguese author (The Stone Raft, 1995, etc.). This time, Saramago tells the story of a publisher's proofreader, Raimundo Silva, a middle-aged solitary who has no life apart from his work--until his absorption in a complex historical work (about the siege of Lisbon) is derailed by a sudden, inexplicable action. Raimundo changes a single word in this text, the consequence being that it now asserts (incorrectly) that the Crusaders did not aid the 12th-century Portuguese King Alfonso in reclaiming his capital city from its Moorish occupiers. Raimundo's ``insolent disregard for sound historical facts'' inevitably outrages his employers, but piques the curiosity of his new editor, Maria Sara, who suggests he write a novel developing the possibilities inherent in the alternative history he has thus ``created.'' From this point, both Raimundo's novel and Saramago's (which encloses it) assume a dizzying variety of shifting forms: dialogues between author and character(s); quotidian encounters and occurrences that are paralleled by both known history and the proofreaders's romanticized improvement of it; and transpositions of Raimundo and Maria Sara (who becomes his mistress) into the Portuguese hero Mogueime and the stalwart concubine Ouroana. Saramago moves gracefully between the world of the reinvented past and the unheroic realm in which Raimundo's pleasing fantasies are constantly interrupted by hunger pangs and ringing telephones. The novel embraces a dauntingly broad range of references, juxtaposes past and present tense mischievously, and takes the form of elegantly convoluted long sentences and paragraphs--which, though they demand intense concentration, never descend to obscurity, thanks to Saramago's lucidity and wit and his superb translator's verbal and syntactical resourcefulness. The best work we've seen yet from a consummate artificer who may well be one of the greatest living novelists. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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.

(Amazon.com Review )

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.
(Library Journal ) --This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B003T0GIHM
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; First edition (September 1, 1998)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ September 1, 1998
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 2931 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 322 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #460,836 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #773 in Historical European Fiction
- #1,026 in Alternative History
- #1,820 in Alternate History Science Fiction (Books)

Customer Reviews:
4.1 132 ratings

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Giovanni Pontiero
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Giovanni Pontiero (10 February 1932 - 10 February 1996) was a British scholar and translator of Portuguese fiction, most notably the works of José Saramago. His translation of the Saramago work The Gospel According to Jesus Christ was awarded the Teixeira-Gomes Prize for Portuguese translation.
Pontiero was born in Glasgow and graduated from the university of Glasgow in 1960. In 1962 he was appointed lecturer in Latin American studies at Manchester. He was later promoted to senior lecturer and finally Reader in Latin-American Literature in the Victoria University of Manchester until his retirement in 1995.[1] He was the principal translator into English of the works of Clarice Lispector, and met acclaim for his translation of Lispector's A Hora da Estrela, known in English as The Hour of the Star. He was amongst those to note Pandeism to be an influence on the writings of noted mid-twentieth-century Brazilian poet Carlos Nejar.[2]
Pontiero is known for saying, "Encounters with the animal world are frequent in Lispector’s stories. Untouched by human contradictions, animals are more alive because they are more secure than human beings."
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Jose Saramago
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JOSE SARAMAGO is one of the most acclaimed writers in the world today. He is the author of numerous novels, including All the Names, Blindness, and The Cave. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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4.1 out of 5

132 global ratings

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Seachranaiche

Islands in the Stream

Reviewed in the United States on August 26, 2007

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I have had a difficult time deciding how many stars I should appoint to "The History of the Siege of Lisbon", and here's why--I found the following passage to be a pragmatic and insightful observation of human character:

"...We're positively mad, Do you mean us, No, I was referring to people in general, I'm one of those people who thinks that human beings have always been mentally deranged, As platitudes go, that isn't bad, Perhaps it will sound less like a platitude if I tell you that in my opinion madness is the result of the shock produced in man by his own intelligence and we still haven't recovered from the trauma three million years later..."

This is part of a conversation between the two main contemporary characters in the book, Raimundo Silva and Maria Sara, and no matter how many times I re-read it, ticking off sentence by sentence, I cannot tell who believes human beings to be mentally deranged, Raimundo Silva or Maria Sara. I suspect these words belong to Silva because they have a male arrogance about them, but that's not the point. These words could just as easily have come from Maria Sara. It is possible that Saramago meant for the reader to be confused, to show his characters becoming one mentally as well as physically, but I don't think so. I think that in the original Portuguese there is some gender inflection that casts this dialog in context.

Perhaps, perhaps not, but here's the rub: When an author abandons the norms of punctuation and structure in order to create a different ambience within the story, well, the story better work. This could be the most difficult book I have ever read. I am even thinking back to my days with Proust and Dostoevsky, and I think Saramago's got them beat. I experienced moments of sincere enjoyment, but these were few. For the most part this book was pure work, confusing and slow. But within the confused sentence structure I could sometimes sense a meter; I could detect an order and flow to the words and I found an irony there. Saramago's main character, a proof-reader, alters history by changing a single word in a historical text, launching a hidden narrative that reaches out from medieval times to connect with the present--islands in the stream of time. The continuity of timelessness is what Saramago represents with his run-on sentence structure, and his lines in the Portuguese must read with the beauty of verse. Alas, this beauty is lost in the English translation, like a crucial change in a historical account, creating a much different story, almost a mystery...interesting, now I must re-read the book. Brilliant! Five stars.

24 people found this helpful

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James C. Casterline

Worthwhile book and interesting read

Reviewed in the United States on September 8, 2015

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This was an interesting book to read though the reader probably didn't appreciate it enough. This is a "what if" story based on a translator intentionally adding a word to a translation which significantly changes the history the book writes about. This probably could have been a short story but the author uses his character well, adds detail, writes one of the lter native history, adds a romantic/business interest and turns it into good book. I recommend it even though I am probably not qualified to do so.

2 people found this helpful

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Where Pen Meets Paper

A Good Book and Worthy of an Award, but Not My Favorite Saramago Book

Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2010

Before we begin, I must confess that José Saramago is one of my favorite authors. His creativity, social critiques, and pseudo-realism in works like Blindness, The Stone Raft, and All the Names leave spellbinding memories etched in my brain. With Saramago's recent passing, I felt it necessary to finally read his Nobel Prize winning book, The History of the Siege of Lisbon.

Characteristic of Saramago's work, The History of the Siege of Lisbon contains long flowing sentences with little punctuation. Where a period would usually suffice, Saramago inserts a comma; where quotation marks typically reside, he deletes them. With these characteristics in mind, the book requires a close reading.

The History of the Siege of Lisbon follows a lonely proof-reader named Raimundo Silva through his secluded lifestyle within the remarkable metropolis of Lisbon. Raimundo's only friends seem to be reference books on grammar and his only hobby is to correct the thoughts of others. One day while Raimundo edits a book detailing the history of the siege of Lisbon, he decides to create instead of edit. Where the book once reminded us that the crusaders came to the aid of the Portuguese in the war against the Moors, Raimundo's newly revised edition concludes that the crusaders most certainly did not heed the call to help their Portuguese brethren. A simple "no" not only alters the course of history, it also modifies his relationship with his publishing house. Ultimately, Raimundo's talent is the only thing that keeps him from unemployment.

The turmoil generated by a proofreader's decision to create instead of edit brings Raimundo some unlikely benefit: the publishing house hires a lovely woman named Maria Sara to proofread the proofreaders. As the narrative expands, Raimundo and Maria's relationship slowly turns from professional to something slightly more romantic. Raimundo's brazen attempt to alter a historical fact intrigues Maria and one day she encourages him to finish the history of the siege of Lisbon with the changed premise regarding the crusaders. What follows is a masterfully blended tale of both Raimundo and Maria's relationship and the relationship of characters developed in the revised history book Raimundo writes at the request of Maria Sara.

"The two roses in the vase are standing in water from which they draw nourishment, it is true that they do not last long, but relatively speaking, neither do we" (285).

The History of the Siege of Lisbon is ultimately a book about life, death, and the relationships that keep us going. Years pass on a clock and years pass on a face, but the more important part of life is the relationship you have with the people around you, the joy of having a second rose in the vase.

As mentioned before, The History of the Siege of Lisbon is a challenging read. José Saramago's unique style coupled with a story told in two dimensions requires an astute eye. However, persistence pays off with this book as the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. I wholeheartedly recommend this book to anyone who is willing to work through the challenging syntax in order to see the narrative as a whole. However, if you are new to José Saramago, I urge you to start with a more popular work such as Blindness.

Originally published at [...]

9 people found this helpful

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Earl Benshaw

One of my all-time favourite books

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 12, 2021

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This was my first Jose Saramago. You open the book and immediately get blasted by : NO PUNCTUATION!
How on earth are you supposed to know who is saying what and when?
But if you stick with it (start reading this when you have a bit of time and peace), after a while it is just obvious. He is an incomparable master and the translation is also wonderful.
Premise - a translator mis-translates a single word in a large document and this turns his whole world upside down.
This is one of the most unexpected and beautiful stories I have ever read - and I read a lot. This is one of those books that I give to friends - which is what this Amazon purchase was about. This is really something special.

One person found this helpful

Sanjivv Tulsyan

Wonderful

Reviewed in India on February 27, 2019

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Wonderful

hdf

Five Stars

Reviewed in Canada on December 4, 2014

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Good read.

muriel

The history siege of lisbon

Reviewed in France on September 8, 2013

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This book is clever, witty and pedagogical. The english translation is perfect. This is My favourite book by Jose saramango.

Aditya Bose

The Book Review

Reviewed in India on March 13, 2021

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The book lies somewhere between okay and good. The factual point is that the narration of war between the Christian Portuguese defending the invading Moors in the historic seige is done in a very long but in an interesting manner.

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