The Stone Raft (Paperback)

~ (Author) "When Joana Carda scatched the ground with the elm branch all the dogs of Cerbere began to bark, throwing the inhabitants into panic and terror,..." (more)
Key Phrases: lonely navigator, elm branch, stone ship, Joaquim Sassa, Pedro Orce, Joana Carda (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Portuguese novelist Saramago's surreal political fable follows the adventures of the inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula after it literally breaks away from Europe.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Review

In this charming Portuguese political fable by the author of The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, pandemonium occurs when the Iberian peninsula breaks loose (literally) and goes charging off into the North Atlantic. Bureaucrats fret because the errant land mass is speeding straight toward the Azores; the Government of National Salvation plots to avoid impending disaster, but the former peninsula has its own agenda. Meanwhile, five Iberian residents separately experience assorted phenomena they believe are connected to the rupture. (One makes an ineradicable line in the earth, another becomes a human seismograph, another unravels a neverending sock, etc.) Through a series of coincidences and the efforts of a mute and nameless dog, the five find each other and begin a gypsy-like peregrination to make sense of the peninsula's fractious behavior. At times an unexpected darkness intrudes on these proceedings—Saramago heckles his characters occasionally for no discernible reason—and the conclusion seems abrupt, its somber notes ringing false. However, the political reaction to this geological mishap is marvelously amusing-and greatly enhanced by the author's nimble prose and random metaphysical touches. (Publishers Weekly )

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Product Details

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Harvest Books; Rep Tra edition (June 14, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0156004011
• ISBN-13: 978-0156004015
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.4 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (21 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #296,561 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THERE COMES A TIME WHEN PRIDE HAS NOTHING BUT WORDS, January 17, 2001

By	EriKa "E" (Iceland) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Stone Raft (Paperback)

I bought The Stone Raft several months after Saramago won the Nobel Prize, and I cannot pretend I had even heard of him before that time. I was wandering a bookstore in Reykjavik looking for something new and interesting. I figure that most of the time the Nobel committee selects authors for an outstanding body of work, so I trust their judgment. Having just finished read the majority of Nadine Gordimer's works, I was seeking a fresh voice, but something equally as intelligent and entertaining. The Stone Raft seemed a promising title with a most ridiculous and fantastic premise-Spain and Portugal breaking off the European continent and floating off into the Atlantic. I had not seen something this promising in ages. I bought The Stone Raft and The History of the Siege of Lisbon at the same time, and I immediately delved into The Stone Raft. It was slow going at first, and I could feel a great wave of disappointment creep over me because this was really not as interesting as I anticipated... but WAIT! Within 20 or 30 pages, I was riveted. I am not sure what transformation took place in the course of those pages, but suddenly this was a book I could not put down. I didn't put it down again until I finished it.

Other people have provided plot synapses and analysis, so I won't bore you with further repetition on that subject. All you need to know is that Saramago is one of the most brilliant writers alive, this is one of the most creative books of the 20th century, and Saramago's ability to pose questions that seem at once quite obvious but at the same time quite obscure is uncanny. Saramago's brilliance for observing minutiae in people's daily lives and behaviour is remarkable, and his characters are unforgettable and lively. You will never regret making the time to read this book.

21 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Exquisite allegory imaginatively narrated, March 12, 2000

By	Wordsworth "David" (Greenwich, CT) - See all my reviews

I read The Stone Raft after Blindness and was immensely impressed by both novels. The story concerns the drift of the Iberian peninsula from the rest of Europe. The premise is intriguing as the stone raft sails into the Atlantic heading for God only knows where. It shifts and turns so that North is South and East is West. This crisis brings together the citizens of Iberia challenged to prepare for the possibility the island will slam into the Azores or Canada or the U.S. possibly leaving cities like New York, Boston and Philadelphia inland. The five main characters are brought together by personal miracles and find solace in each other as they witness this drift. I found myself fighting the scientific plausibility of such a phenomenon until I hit this quote: "We're already traveling on a stone raft." Indeed, the planet drifts through the galaxy just as Saramago's stone navigates the currents of the sea. In Blindness I began to realize that Saramago's writing style, devoid of quotation marks, is the grammar of discovery, of a narration of characters trying to find their ways. In Blindness we are challenged to search the text for hints about who is speaking and where the author is venturing. Such a narrative style suits Saramago well as these two novels deal with the search for meaning in a chaotic universe. Such meaning inevitably seems to terminate with the sense we make out of each other. This is a great and wise novel, which I highly recommend.

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A dream flourishing in the reader's mind..., October 12, 1998

By A Customer

I have read José Saramago's Stone raft in Portuguese, some years ago. I encourage everyone to read this book, even if I cannot speak about its translated versions. The Stone Raft has left me a very strong impression, above all for the author's style: his very particular ponctuation produces a very lively reading. The story just blooms in one's mind, and the author's rythm - his very breathing - takes control of the reader, which can't help but following the characters' trip through a deriving Iberian Peninsula. Arriving at the end of the last page is like awakening from a dream: I couldn't tell the story of the novel then, just as I'm unable to do it now. Still, I find this quite significant to point out: The Stone raft, which is about the Iberian Peninsula separating from Europe, was published in 1986, the year when Portugal and Spain joined the European Community. Separating us from Europe in the moment we were achieving to join it, indeed creating a new "us" that has been thoroughly refused for centuries, could not have been the fruit of hazard. Indeed, this was not the most evident way of inventing a disoriented world where people that didn't know each other met on the road, gathered by a surnatural experience. I feel here that, unlike most novels, the background itself is of an utmost importance - not only a pretext to a story - and the "conclusions" of the novel are intimately linked to the pertinence of that imagined reality. Was Saramago doing his part of "Velho do Restelo" (Luís de Camões' skeptic character who tries to persuade portuguese navigators of the dangers of their enterprise)? Likely so, but let us not condemn too quickly the Velhos do Restelo of all times, and acknowledge what Saramago, maybe unvoluntarily, reveals: skepticism about the ways of our time is simultaneously a reactionnary attitude and a revolutionnary virtue, for time doesn't go backwards, and in 1986, only a geographical revolution - or an imaginary one - could keep things as they were for Portugal and Spain.