The Elephant's Journey

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The Journey of the Elephant is a novel by the Portuguese author José Saramago and was published in Germany in 2010. Saramago died after the Portuguese original was published; the German translation was only published posthumously. It is the author's penultimate work.

The novel deals with the historically guaranteed journey of the Indian elephant Solomon , who was given as a gift from the Portuguese King John III. , to the Austrian Archduke Maximilian of Lisbon across the Alps to Vienna.

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One of the main characters is the elephant leader, Indian Mahut , whose motherly wit and inclination to philosophize make it easier for him to deal with people of higher rank. With the exception of Johann and Maximilian and their wives, he advocates the elephant, especially in relation to some of the military, whose natural needs are sometimes even given priority over ducal decisions. Linguistically virtuoso, all stations of the journey, the historical conditions, the behavior of the rulers, military and rural people involved are presented with a fine irony. The narrator regularly intervenes in the narrative, communicates with the reader, points out special features, freely admits to his own gaps in knowledge, wanders off, makes assumptions about the progress of subplots.

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