The Tale of the Unknown Island - Hardcover

Saramago, Jose

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0151005958 ISBN 13: 9780151005956

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999

Synopsis

A moving and eloquent fable from the 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature offers a unique blend of love and philosophy as a man petitions a boat from the king, finds a crew to volunteer, and sets sail.

About this title

About the Author

Jos Saramago was born in Portugal in 1922. His novels have been published in dozens of languages around the world. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Reviews

Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, Saramago (History of the Siege of Lisbon) departs from his signature dense, inventive linguistic style and historically encompassing subjects to offer a simple, intriguing fable. This short, illustrated book begins as a fairy tale with a decidedly political inflection: an unnamed man waits by the king's door for petitions, a door the king neglects because he's occupied at the door for favors ("favors being offered to the king, you understand"). The man's tenacity happily coincides with the monarch's fear of a popular revolt, which results in the king begrudgingly granting the man a seaworthy boat with which he can sail to find "the unknown island." A philosophical discussion about whether such an island exists or is findable precedes the king's acquiescence, and the reader understands that the man is a dreamer, with bold imagination and will. The king's cleaning woman also intuits this, and she leaves the palace to join the man in his adventure. The two would-be explorers claim the boat, only to realize they have no provisions or crew. They elude despair with a celebratory meal and a burgeoning romance. Whether the vessel, newly christened The Unknown Island, ever finds its destination remains a mystery, but a crucial and tender suggestion persists: follow your dream and your dream will follow. More cynical readers may interpret the moral as "be careful what you wish for; you might get it." At the book's close, the man tosses in a dream marked with a desperate yearning for the cleaning woman and filled with images of lush flora and fauna thriving in the boat. Saramago tells his deceptively plain tale in simple prose studded with the dialogue of endearingly innocent characters; readers, dreamers and lovers will detect the psychological, romantic and social subtexts.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

This richly enigmatic short story, published last year by Portugal's reigning Nobel laureate (Blindness, 1998, etc.), is a mischievous and thoughtful satire on ruling elites and bold dreamers, cast in the form of revisionist fairy-tale. One day an unidentified man knocks at the door of a royal castle and demands that its king (of a likewise unspecified country) give him a boat: ``To go in search of the unknown island.'' The king at first protests that nothing unknown exists any longer (according to his royal geographers); but then, worn down by persistent petitionersand in spite of himself piqued by the stranger's boldnessrelents. The cleaning woman, who has overheard all, joins forces with the man (though a crew cannot be assembled), and their hopes of sailing away to this imprecise Xanadu or Shangri-la are resolved only by the mans complex concluding dream, in which this transparent parable of aspiration (``If you don't step outside yourself, you'll never discover who you are'') opens into a vision (of their ship as a forest that sails and bobs upon the waves'') that assumes the dimensions of creation myth. This delightfully cryptic fiction incorporates vivid imagery, aphoristic concision, superbly wry dialogue, and subtly layered levels of meaning: it's variously ``about'' complacent bureaucracies resistant to change, visionaries who are both courageous enough to reach beyond and unable to see the mud below for the stars above, andjust possiblyChristopher Columbus's successful petition for the reluctant Spanish monarchy's support of his great adventure (in this respect, it is perhaps most closely related to Saramago's witty allegory The Stone Raft, 1995). The Swedes knew what they were doing when they honored Saramago. He may be the world's greatest living novelist. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

A Nobel prize winner's fable about a man who petitions an indolent king for a boat.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0151005958
• ISBN 13: 9780151005956
• Binding: Hardcover
• Illustrator: Sis Peter
• Number of pages: 51