SOURCE: A review of A jangada de pedra, in World Literature Today, Vol. 62, No. 1, Winter, 1988, pp. 107-8.

[In the following review, Preto-Rodas discusses A jangada de pedra, finding that "despite a loose structure," the novel succeeds in its examination of the status of the Iberian peninsula in the modern world.]

In his most recent novel [A jangada de pedra] José Saramago focuses on Portugal (and Spain) in the near future, a departure from his celebrated historical work Memorial do convento (see WLT 61:1, pp. 27-31). Invoking an anonymous observation that the Iberian Peninsula resembles a raft, the "stone raft" of the title, the author sets into motion a remarkable chain of events which occur when the peninsula is suddenly sundered along the Franco-Spanish border from the rest of Europe. Iberia's traditional subaltern status in a more advanced Europe has dramatically ceased to be a continental embarrassment now that Europe...