Sinopsis

A humble proof-reader for a Lisbon publishing house takes it upon himself to insert a negative into the sentence of a history book, thus effectively leaving that history entirely rewritten: what ever the experts have hitherto chosen to say, the visiting crusaders did not help the King of Portugal to recapture Lisbon from the Saracens in the twelfth century. This act of gross insubordination, which might have ended Raimundo Silva's career, has instead the unexpected result of making his superior, the fetching Maria Sara, fall in love with him, and in his middle age romance blossoms. Under her impetus the humble proof-reader rewrites the history of the siege of Lisbon in a style graphic enough to satisfy the most exigent reader of historical romances. As in The Stone Raft, so in this new novel Jos.