SOURCE: "Continental Drift," in Los Angeles Times Book Review, May 28, 1995, pp. 3, 11.

[In the following review, Eder considers The Stone Raft to be one of Saramago's greatest literary achievements.]

At the start of The Stone Raft, a river that flows from France into Spain disappears into the ground. Soon a rift appears, bisecting the Pyrenees lengthwise; in a day or two the rift is 30 feet wide. The entire Iberian Peninsula has broken off from Europe and begun to head west across the Atlantic; slowly, at first, and then at a rate of some 30 miles a day.

By the end of the book, Spain and Portugal, the great stone raft of the title, will have made a jog north to avoid decapitating the Azores, will head for North America, will stop and slowly revolve so that Lisbon faces east and Barcelona west, and then slide south to come to rest...