José Saramago's “The Centaur” was first published in English in the collection Telling Tales, edited by Nadine Gordimer and published by Picador in 2004. Giovanni Pontiero translated the story from Portuguese into English. The short story was published earlier in Portuguese in Saramago's short story collection Objecto Quase (Almost an Object) published by Editorial Caminho of Lisbon in 1978 and 1984.

Like other stories by the author, “The Centaur” involves a blending of the fantastical with the everyday or mundane. In the story, a centaur, who is the lone survivor of the mythical species, roams the Earth evading capture and persecution by human beings. As he travels toward his home country, which he has avoided returning to for millennia, he struggles to reconcile the opposite needs of his two halves: he possesses the mind and upper body of a man and the lower body of a horse. In this tale, Saramago explores the universal themes of alienation, loneliness, dualism, and the human fear and hatred of the unknown.