Explore "The History of the Siege of Lisbon" by José Saramago on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
This novel, whose title suggests a book on Portuguese history, permits the author to speculate about the difference between historiography, historical novels and "stories inserted into history" which is the type of book José Saramago himself prefers to write.
By questioning the validity of a historical source and imagining an alternative version of recorded events, the proof-reader Raimundo Silva not only rewrites an important chapter of Portuguese history but in the process irrevocably transforms his own life. This History of the Siege of Lisbon is therefore neither conventional history nor historical novel, but demonstrates Saramago's contention that history and fiction are constantly overlapping.