"The Elephant's Journey" by José Saramago

 Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa (2010)

 

 In 2008’s The Elephant’s Journey, Nobel Prize winner José Saramago recounts the 1552 handing-over of adult Asian elephant Solomon (or Suleiman or Solimon), from Dom João III, the king of Portugal, to Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Told with tongue firmly in cheek, it leaves no social stratum un-hoisted on the petard of our clever author’s sense of irony. It’s funny cover to cover; it strictly maintains a 21st Century point of view, and doesn’t let latter-day foolishness go unpunished, either. I can’t remember laughing out loud so often while reading a semi-serious work of fiction.

Dom João III, mighty king of the vast Portuguese trading and military empire, puzzles at the outset, wondering what kind of gift he can give his friend and ally Austrian Archduke Maximilian to further cement their relations. It would be difficult to name two more august royals in Europe at the time — Portugal nearly at the height of its global power, and the Holy Roman Empire that epoch’s European colossus. 

However, Saramago portrays these august personages as insecure, petty, self-aggrandizing and sometimes downright silly. However, the author reserves his most barbed observations for the two military contingents, one from each empire. The way they torture themselves over minute details, and whose pride will be damaged by whom, is simply beyond the pale — in the hands of this world-renowned author, it’s  gorgeous, and gorgeously funny. in this  Saramago imagines they turn the simplest of transactions into trouble over trifles about who will stand where, and who will be allowed into the Portuguese outpost for the transfer. Spoiler: NOT the Austrians!

Our Nobelist author saves his most open-hearted passages for the two characters at the center of his narrative: the elephant and his mahout, or handler. The elephant is cooperative and rather quick to learn; and Subhro, the handler, learns about European rivalries, Catholic hypocrisy and showmanship during the bloody Lutheran Reformation and its religious wars, and tries to monetize his main asset by selling elephant hair as a cure for baldness. 

Needless to say, I’m recommending this tour de force comic novel in the highest terms possible. Take and enjoy.