Book Review: The Elephant’s Journey by Jose Saramago

In 1551, Solomon the elephant is given as a wedding present by King Dom Joao III to a Hapsburg archduke in Vienna. The elephant has to walk of course and the journey begins with Solomon and his entourage heading towards Valladolid in Spain on the first leg of the journey.

The text mimics the slow plodding journey of the entourage as the words stretch across the whole page from top to bottom with hardly any breaks, not even for conversations. This makes for difficult reading, at least it did for me, as there’s little capitalisation so I had to reread some lines to work out who was taking to whom.

Anyway, Solomon travels to Italy, bending his knees in veneration at the shrine of St Anthony in Padua before heading over The Alps (in the opposite way to Hannibal’s elephants) towards Austria. He endears himself to the Viennese as he enters their city by rescuing a small girl who was about to run under his feet.