by José Saramago · ALFAGUARA · tapa dura · ISBN 9788420474632
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«El viaje del elefante» is the historical novel by José Saramago, published by Alfaguara in hardcover (270 pages, in Spanish).
In the mid-16th century, King John III of Portugal gives his cousin, Archduke Maximilian of Austria, an Asian elephant named Salomón. The novel follows its journey across Europe, an absurd route of royal whims and outlandish strategies. Saramago blends history and invention with humor and irony to reflect on humanity.
Original title in Portuguese: A Viagem do Elefante. The Spanish translation is by Pilar del Río, in the Literaturas collection from Alfaguara.
A novel for readers of historical fiction and literary narrative, and for followers of Saramago's ironic gaze.
José de Sousa Saramago was a Portuguese writer. He was the recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature for his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony [with which he] continually enables us once again to apprehend an elusory reality." His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. In 2003 Harold Bloom described Saramago as "the most gifted novelist alive in the world today" and in 2010 said he considers Saramago to be "a permanent part of the Western canon", while James Wood praises "the distinctive tone to his fiction because he narrates his novels as if he were someone both wise and ignorant."
