Book description
Solomon the elephant's life is about to be upturned. For two years he
has been in Lisbon, brought from the Portuguese colonies in India. Now
King Dom João III wishes to make him a wedding gift for the Hapsburg
archduke, Maximilian. It's a nice idea, since it avoids the Portuguese
king offending his Lutheran cousin with an overtly Catholic present.
But it means the poor pachyderm must travel from Lisbon to Vienna on
foot - the only option when transporting a large animal such a long
way. So begins a journey that will take the stalwart Solomon across
the dusty plains of Castile, over the sea to Genoa and up to northern
Italy where, like Hannibal's elephants before him, he must cross the
snowy Alps. Accompanying him is his quiet keeper, Subhro, who watches
while - at every place they stop - people try to turn Solomon into
something he is not. From worker of holy miracles to umbrella stand,
the unassuming elephant suffers the many attempts of humans to impose
meaning on what they don't understand.
Saramago's latest novel is an enchanting mix of fact (an Indian
elephant really did make this journey in 1551), fable and fantasy.
Filled with wonderful landscapes and local colour, peppered with witty
reflection on human failings and achievements, it is, in the end,
about the journey of life itself.
José Saramago was one of the most important international writers of
the
last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922 in the small rural village
of Azinhaga, he was in his fifties when he came to prominence as a
writer with the publication of
Baltasar and Blimunda
. A huge body of work followed, which included plays, poetry, short
stories, non-fiction and over a dozen novels, translated into more than
forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for
Literature. He died in June 2010.
