José Saramago, a Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize winner, died last month.  He was 87.  From Baltasar and Blimunda, Saramago's 1982 love story between a soldier who has lost his left hand and a clairvoyant, set in 1711 Lisbon, during the Inquisition:

Baltasar recoiled in alarm, he made a rapid sign of the cross, in order...