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The Tale of the Unknown Island
  • Published: 1 August 2002
  • ISBN: 9781860466908
  • Imprint: Harvill Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 48
  • RRP: $26.99

The Tale of the Unknown Island

Formats & editions
EBook
30 Nov 2011
Paperback
1 Aug 2002
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A wonderful and witty book, part folk fable, part philosophical tale, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature and the greatest Portuguese writer of his time.

"A man went to knock at the king's door and said, Give me a boat. The king's house had many other doors, but this was the door for petitions. Since the king spent all his time sitting by the door for favours (favours being offered to the king, you understand), whenever he heard someone knocking on the door for petitions, he would pretend not to hear..."

Why the petitioner required a boat, where he was bound for, and who volunteered to crew for him and what cargo it was found to be carrying the reader will discover as this short narrative unfolds. And at the end it will be clear that what night appear to be a children's fable is in fact a wry, witty Philosophical Tale that would not have displeased Voltaire or Swift.
  • Published: 1 August 2002
  • ISBN: 9781860466908
  • Imprint: Harvill Press
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 48
  • RRP: $26.99
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About the authors

José Saramago

JOSÉ DE SOUSA SARAMAGO, (November 1922 - June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992, and co-founder with Orhan Pamuk, of the European Writers' Parliament (EWP).
portrait photo of José Saramago

Praise for The Tale of the Unknown Island

Saramago writes possibly the most beautiful but certainly the most precise and differentiated Portuguese prose of our time

Walter Haubrich, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

Saramago is a writer of formidable talent and extraordinary imagination

La Repubblica

To speak of the novels of José Saramago is to speak of the sheer pleasure of reading

O Diario, Lisbon

He was the equal of Philip Roth, Günter Grass, Thomas Pynchon and Don DeLillo. His genius was remarkably versatile - he was at once a great comic and a writer of shocking earnestness and grim poignancy

Harold Bloom

Saramago is a writer, like Faulkner, so confident of his resources and ultimate destination that he can bring any improbability to life

John Updike

No candidate for a Nobel Prize has a better claim to lasting recognition than this novelist

Edmund White