El Viaje del Elefante / The Elephant's Journey (Paperback)

from EBT1002

In the mid-16th century, the King of Portugal gives Solomon the Elephant to the Archduke of Austria as a wedding gift. Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin the trek from Portugal to Vienna along with the archduke and his bride, a guard militia, and assorted other necessary companions in an exten...

from tututhefirst

This is Saramago's last work, and I think his masterpiece. He learned of the true story behind this book when he was guest lecturing in Austria and saw a series of illustrations depicting the tale. In 1551 King Joao III decided to give archduke Maximillian of Austria a wedding present. He sent hi...

from -Cee-

Written toward the end of his life, Saramago gives us his view of uneven struggles for power, acceptance, survival, value, and relationship to the natural world. He has written a satire which at times is quite humorous. But more importantly, in this story set at the end of the Middle Ages, Sarama...

from rmckeown

José Saramago, the Portuguese author, won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. He died last year. I have read about a half-dozen of Saramago's works, and each time I start another of his novels, it takes a bit of getting use to his style. The Elephant's Journey is exactly that. Saramago based ...

from labfs39

While dining with a colleague in Salzburg, Saramago noticed several small wooden sculptures lined up in a row. He learned that they were representations of stops made by an elephant, on a long journey from Portugal to Vienna in 1551. Intrigued, Saramago did more research and then imagined the jou...