Baltasar and Blimunda by José Saramago
Published 1982 · 138,000 words · about 9 hours at an average pace · Historical Fiction, Literary Fiction
How hard is Baltasar and Blimunda to read?
Baltasar and Blimunda scores 51 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it quite demanding. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Baroque 18th-century Portuguese in translation.
- Sentence structure: 55 out of 100
- Saramago's characteristic long sentences.
- Abstraction: 55 out of 100
- History, love, and the impossible interweave.
- Information density: 55 out of 100
- Dense with Portuguese history and Inquisition.
- Narrative indirection: 50 out of 100
- Magic realism requires interpretation.
- Symbolic density: 60 out of 100
- The machine, Blimunda's sight, love carry weight.
- Ironic distance: 50 out of 100
- Saramago's critique of power operates through story.
- Resolution withholding: 50 out of 100
- Love transcends death.
- Structural complexity: 45 out of 100
- Follows love story through Inquisition Portugal.
How Baltasar and Blimunda is regarded
Baltasar and Blimunda holds a literary regard score of 59 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.