: A real-life historical figure (the "Flying Priest") who dreams of building the Passarola , a flying machine powered not by fuel, but by human wills collected by Blimunda. 2. Power vs. The Invisible Masses

The phrase likely arises from several possibilities:

: A woman with "visionary sight" who can see inside people's bodies—but only when fasting—perceiving their "wills" rather than their souls.

Searching for shows you’re eager to dive into Saramago’s world. We recommend doing so through legal channels—Google Play, Kobo, Apple Books, or your local library—to ensure a high-quality reading experience and to support the legacy of one of literature’s greatest voices.

Saramago’s narrative is not a simple historical romance. It is a treatise on human will, religious dogma, and the clash between the mystical and the scientific. The flying machine, the Passarola , serves as a metaphor for human aspiration—a machine that flies not on fuel, but on human wills harvested by Blimunda.

When looking for a legitimate digital copy of the English translation, ensure the file is (which handles complex layouts and footnotes well, though Saramago famously avoids footnotes for his digressions). The ISBN for the English paperback (Harvest/Harcourt) is 978-0156006248; the eBook version carries the same content.

Saramago is notorious for his walls of text. He often eschews standard paragraph breaks, and his dialogue is woven into the narrative without quotation marks, distinguished only by commas and capitalization. On a printed page, this can be dense and intimidating. On a small smartphone screen, it can be illegible.