SOURCE: "Raimundo's Rebellion," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 25, 1997, p. 2.

[In the following review, Eder praises the satire and irony in The History of the Siege of Lisbon.]

It begins with an explosion of words, as if they were stored in a silo and had spontaneously combusted. For a while the air is choked with clouds of chaff: paragraphs that run for pages and looping dialogue whose tenses and speakers change repeatedly in the same sentence.

The dust settles. We perceive a middle-aged Lisbon proofreader in a foggy philosophical disputation with the author of the book he is correcting. It is an account of Alfonso Henriqucs, Portugal's first king, capturing Lisbon from the Moors 850 years ago.

Without transition, we go from present-day Lisbon back to 1147. A muezzin is about to call out the noon summons to prayer. He could be a condemned man springing the trap on...