Baltasar and Blimunda

As far as I can tell, Baltasar and Blimunda is the earliest of Jose Saramago's novels to be translated into English, a pattern which followed from then 1987 until his death two years ago. I'm basing this solely off of the fact that every book before this on his Wikipedia page has a Portuguese title, while all after have English titles- that's about as much research as I feel the subject needs. Anyway, as such, I assume this is sort of the beginning of Saramago's Western canon, and I wondered if he'd struggle to find his style and deliver a solid novel. Well, the style seems to have been figured out at this point (again, Saramago was on his eighth book by now) but the boring subject matter just couldn't hold my interest. We have two lovers- Baltasar, a veteran who lost his arm in the recent war, and Blimunda, a heretical clairvoyant, who join up with a priest attempting to build a flying machine in order to escape from the Spanish Inquisition. This was alright, I suppose, but by the time they escape the book quickly switches to a long narration of the construction of the Mafra National Palace in Portugal. At this point the characters lost all focus for me and there were just way too many references to the history of Portugal for me to bother understanding. Since this post lacks much content, I'm gonna take a little time to give a preliminary rank'ems to see where Saramago stands for me as I attempt to finish his English-translated books:

1. The Double
2. Blindness
3. All The Names
4. The Cave
5. Seeing
6. The Stone Raft
7. The History of the Siege of Lisbon
8. Baltasar and Blimunda

How about that, only four remain- The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, Death With Interruptions, and The Elephant's Journey. Will I have read all of Jose Saramago's novels before 2013? Stay tuned to find out!