Baltasar & Blimunda - Jos Saramago

As the Inquisition rages, an extraordinary trinity struggle to realise a creation that will fly in the face of the monstrous vanity of Church and State.

In early 18th-century Lisbon, Baltasar, a soldier who has lost his left hand in battle, falls in love with Blimunda, a young girl with visionary powers. From the day that he follows her home from theauto-da-fewhere his mother is burned at the stake, the two are bound body and soul by a love of unassailable strength. A third party shares their supper that evening: Padre Bartolomeu Lourenco, whose fantasy is to invent a flying machine. As the Crown and the Church clash, they pursue his impossible, not to mention heretical, dream of flight.