Saramago's Latest

Complete Review pointed this out as well, but the Independent has an article by Elizabeth Nash about the latest Saramago book, The Elephant’s Journey:

Portugal’s Nobel Literature laureate Jose Saramago has announced the completion of his latest work “The Elephant’s Journey”, based on the real-life epic journey of an Indian elephant named Solomon who travelled from Lisbon to Vienna in the 16th century.

Saramago’s achievement marks a rebirth for the veteran writer, 86, whose flagging health, for which he received hospital treatment late last year, sounded alarm bells in the literary world.

The author describes the book as “a story rather than a novel”. It will be published shortly in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan, and opens with the line: “However incongruous it may seem . . .”

This sounds pretty promising, and will hopefully be translated into English in the next year or so.

In other Portuguese literary news, the latest Antonio Lobo Antunes book What Can I Do When Everything’s On Fire? is now available in bookstores everywhere. I started reading this the other day and am pretty amazed. It’s a bleak book, but the style is incredible and innovative. At first glance, it looks like a prose poem, with lines abruptly breaking off, voices from various characters and times intruding on the protagonist’s consciousness, sudden italics. But as you start to read it, things become clear (or at least comprehensible) very quickly, and this strange style creates a nicely textured novel.