The Stone Raft

An irresistible blend of shrewd detail and lyrical fantasy... A seductive novel that needs to be savoured

Helen Dunmore, Observer

An invitation to one of the richest bodies of work by a living writer

Amanda Hopkinson, New Statesman

Jose Saramago's brilliant evocation...is magical realism of a sort that stirs real wonder

James Park, Time Out

Saramago's lovely and original questing story, in a lineage of others such as Don Quixote and Kipling's Kim, is a journey of the spirit told as a journey of the feet

Richard Eder, Los Angeles Times

Tremendous wit is always apparent in his imaginative conceits, comic digression and verbal and narrative games

Ian Critchley, Sunday Times

An engaging fantasy...this book can't be pinned down however, either as magic realism, Swiftian satire, or dystopian science fiction: in fact its concerns are largely philosophical... Pontiero's excellent translation preserves the strange, looping rhythms of Jose Saramago's prose, as well as his likeably self-referential humour and, most important of all, the sense of a deep and luminous intelligence which informs the whole enterprise

Jonathan Coe, Mail on Sunday