by José Saramago · Editorial Caminho · tapa blanda · ISBN 9789722123365
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«O conto da ilha desconhecida» is the tale by José Saramago, published by Editorial Caminho in paperback (45 pages, in Portuguese).
A man asks the king for a boat to search for an island that does not yet appear on maps. The king asks how he can know it exists if it is unknown; he replies that all islands are unknown until someone lands on them. This fable can be read as a parable about dreams, willpower and the need to step outside oneself in order to know oneself.
The tale was first published in 1997; this edition from Editorial Caminho dates from 1999 and is illustrated by Bartolomeu dos Santos.
A brief read with a philosophical undertone, for those who enjoy Saramago's prose or parables about the human condition.
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."
