The Stone Raft
Published on 1. June 2000
Book
Paperback/Softback
288 pages
978-1-86046-721-9 (ISBN)
Description
What if, one day, Europe was to crack along the length of the Pyrenees, separating Spain and Portugal from the rest of Europe?
In Saramago's fable, a new island is sent spinning through the ocean like a great stone raft. While the authorities panic and tourists flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by omens that burden them with a peculiar responsibility. In this magical realist tale, the six take to the road, finding themselves adrift in a world now unfamiliar and forced to reckon with their relationships, human psychology and the shakiness of belief itself.
In Saramago's fable, a new island is sent spinning through the ocean like a great stone raft. While the authorities panic and tourists flee, three men, two women and a dog are drawn together by omens that burden them with a peculiar responsibility. In this magical realist tale, the six take to the road, finding themselves adrift in a world now unfamiliar and forced to reckon with their relationships, human psychology and the shakiness of belief itself.
Reviews / Votes
An irresistible blend of shrewd detail and lyrical fantasy... A seductive novel that needs to be savoured -- Helen Dunmore * Observer * An invitation to one of the richest bodies of work by a living writer -- Amanda Hopkinson * New Statesman * Jose Saramago's brilliant evocation...is magical realism of a sort that stirs real wonder -- James Park * Time Out * Saramago's lovely and original questing story, in a lineage of others such as Don Quixote and Kipling's Kim, is a journey of the spirit told as a journey of the feet -- Richard Eder * Los Angeles Times * Tremendous wit is always apparent in his imaginative conceits, comic digression and verbal and narrative games -- Ian Critchley * Sunday Times * An engaging fantasy...this book can't be pinned down however, either as magic realism, Swiftian satire, or dystopian science fiction: in fact its concerns are largely philosophical... Pontiero's excellent translation preserves the strange, looping rhythms of Jose Saramago's prose, as well as his likeably self-referential humour and, most important of all, the sense of a deep and luminous intelligence which informs the whole enterprise -- Jonathan Coe * Mail on Sunday *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
London
United Kingdom
Publishing group
Vintage Publishing
Product notice
Paperback (UK-B)
Dimensions
Height: 198 mm
Width: 129 mm
Thickness: 20 mm
Weight
189 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-86046-721-9 (9781860467219)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Previous edition
Jose Saramago
The Stone Raft
Book
04/1999
The Harvill Press
€31.13
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Person
Jose Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922, he was in his sixties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago died in June 2010.