Book review: 'The Elephant's Journey' by Jose Saramago The
Elephant's Journey  A Novel  José Saramago  Translated from the
Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa  Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:
208 pp., $24  Once upon a time — a time of civil war and
spectacle, when Protestant fervor swept Europe and the
Inquisition intimidated the faithful — an Indian elephant
traveled on foot from Lisbon to Vienna. Four and a half
centuries later, this arduous and unlikely trek inspired
Portuguese Nobel laureate José Saramago to write his most
optimistic, playful, humorous and magical book, a grace note
written near the end of his life.  Like Cervantes and Voltaire,
Swift and Twain, Saramago, who died in June at 87, was adept at
skewing reality for satiric purposes. His fierce opposition to
the long dictatorship of Portugal's António Salazar shaped his
most savage novels, including "Blindness" (1995), a dark parable
in which a contemporary city descends into chaos and cruelty
after an epidemic renders the populace sightless.  By com