the elephant's journey review

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The Elephant's Journey by José Saramago

"T he past is an immense area of stony ground that many people would like to drive across as if it were a motorway, while others move patiently from stone to stone, lifting each one because they need to know what lies beneath. Sometimes scorpions crawl out or centipedes, fat white caterpillars or ripe chrysalises, but it's not impossible that, at least once, an elephant might appear. . ."

When he died last month, the man who wrote those words in The Elephant's Journey , José Saramago , was an old man, 87 years old. His preoccupations and politics and passions might seem to belong to a past age: a diehard communist impatient of dictators, subversive of orthodoxies, disrespectful of international corporations, peasant-born in a marginal country and identifying himself always with the powerless, a radical who lived on into an age when even liberals are spoken of as leftist . . . But the still more intransigent radicalism of his art makes it impossible to dismiss him from the busy chatrooms of the present. He got ahead of us; he is ahead of us. His work belongs to our future. I take comfort in this. As we patiently lift stones in the endless fields of modern literature, we must expect scorpions and grubs, but it is now certain that, at least once, an elephant has appeared.

Acceptance of a Nobel prize is an almost irresistible invitation to one of Shelley's unacknowledged legislators to do a bit of legislating. Saramago's Nobel speech in 1998 was characteristic in its stubborn self-reference and limitation. He talked about himself and his works. He talked, however, with a hard-won simplicity that allowed him to say large things quietly. He sounded like a thoughtful, serious man talking to a friend. Having spoken of his grandparents, Portuguese peasant villagers, and of characters in his early novels, he went on to say: "It was with such men and women risen from the ground, real people first, figures of fiction later, that I learned how to be patient, to trust and to confide in time, that same time that simultaneously builds and destroys us in order to build and once more to destroy us. The only thing I am not sure of having assimilated satisfactorily is something that the hardship of those experiences turned into virtues in those women and men: a naturally austere attitude towards life. Having in mind, however, that the lesson learned still after more than twenty years remains intact in my memory, that every day I feel its presence in my spirit like a persistent summons, I haven't lost, not yet at least, the hope of meriting a little more the greatness of those examples of dignity proposed to me in the vast immensity of the plains of Alentejo."

And, calling himself "the apprentice", he said of perhaps his most powerful book: "Blind. The apprentice thought, 'We are blind', and he sat down and wrote Blindness to remind those who might read it that we pervert reason when we humiliate life, that human dignity is insulted every day by the powerful of our world, that the universal lie has replaced the plural truths, that man stopped respecting himself when he lost the respect due to his fellow-creatures."

In the last phrase of this eloquent sentence, Saramago doesn't say fellow-men, but fellow-creatures. To him "man" is not the sole subject of human interest, in whom all value and meaning inheres, but a member of a large household. Saramago's reminder to us that we aren't the be-all and end-all of creation is, usually, a dog. I developed a simple ranking system for his fiction: the books with a dog are better than the ones with no dog; the more important the dog, the better the book.

In The Elephant's Journey his reminder of the importance of the nonhuman is on a far larger scale. So it isn't surprising that I rank it very high in his work, and that it immediately, with no effort at all, joined the more forbidding novels that I have come to love best – The Stone Raft , Blindness , The Cave .

History attests that in 1551, an elephant made the journey from Lisbon to Vienna, escorted first by officers of King João III of Portugal, then by officers of the Archduke Maximilian of Austria. Solomon the elephant and his mahout had already made a long sea voyage from Goa and spent a couple of years standing about in a pen in Lisbon, before setting off for Valladolid as a present from the king to the archduke, who travelled with him to Italy by ship and across the Alps to Vienna. In the novel, Solomon and his mahout Subhro (whom the archduke renames, with true Habsburg infelicity, Fritz) proceed through various landscapes at an unhurried pace, attended by various functionaries and military men, and meeting along the way with villagers and townsfolk who variously interpret the sudden enigma of an elephant entering their lives. And that's the story.

It is extremely funny. Old Saramago writes with a masterfully light hand, and the humour is tender, a mockery so tempered by patience and pity that the sting is gone though the wit remains vital.

The episode that begins with the mahout discussing religion with the Portuguese captain is particularly endearing. Having explained that he is a Christian, more or less, Subhro undertakes to tell the soldiers about Ganesh. You obviously know a good deal about Hinduism, says the captain. More or less, sir, more or less, says the mahout, and goes on to explain how Shiva cut off his son Ganesh's head and replaced it with an elephant's head. "Fairy tales," says a soldier, and the mahout says: "Like the one about the man who, having died, rose on the third day." Peasants from the nearby village are listening with interest. They have agreed: "There's not much to an elephant, really, when you've walked round him once, you've seen all there is to see." But the religious discussion arouses them and they wake up their priest to inform him of the important news: "God is an elephant, father."

The priest sagely replies: "God is in all his creatures." The spokesman retorts: "But none of them is god." "That's all we'd need," says the priest. The peasants argue till the priest settles it by promising to go and exorcise the elephant: "Together," he tells them, "we will fight for our holy religion, and just remember, the people united will never be defeated." Next day he pretends to perform an exorcism, but he cheats, using pig-Latin and unblessed water; and the elephant punishes him for it; or at any rate, for whatever reason, though usually a polite animal, it kicks him, though gently. The whole episode is a series of contained miracles of absurdity, quiet laughter rising out of a profound, resigned, affectionate wisdom.

In his understanding of people Saramago brings us something very rare – a disillusion that allows affection and admiration, a clear-sighted forgiveness. He doesn't expect too much of us. He is perhaps closer in spirit and in humour to our first great novelist, Cervantes, than any novelist since. When the dream of reason and the hope of justice are endlessly disappointed, cynicism is the easy way out; but Saramago the stubborn peasant will not take the easy way out.

Of course he was no peasant; he was a cultivated and sophisticated man, an editor and journalist, for years a city-dweller; he loved Lisbon, and he deals in many novels with the issues of urban/industrial life. Yet he looks on that life from a place outside the city, a place where people make their own living with their own hands. He offers no idyllic pastoral regression, but a realistic sense of where and how common people genuinely connect with what is left of our common world.

In the Nobel talk, he said: "As I could not and did not aspire to venture beyond my little plot of cultivated land, all I had left was the possibility of digging down, underneath, towards the roots. My own but also the world's, if I can be allowed such an immoderate ambition." That hard, patient digging is what gives so light and delightful a book as this its depth and weight. It is no mere fable, as the story of an elephant's journey through the follies and superstitions of 16th-century Europe might well be. It has no moral. There is no happy ending. The elephant Solomon will get to Vienna, yes; and then two years later he will die. But his footprints will remain in the reader's mind: deep, round impressions in the dirt, not leading to the Austrian imperial court or anywhere else yet known, but indicating, perhaps, a more permanently rewarding direction to be followed.

Ursula K Le Guin's Lavinia is published by Phoenix.

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The Elephant’s Journey

Written by José Saramago Review by Lucinda Byatt

It is hard to know which sentiment dominated my reading of this book: sadness at the passing of such a great author, or delight in this whimsical but wise novella, his last work. The circumstances that led Saramago to write the book are serendipitous: he chanced to eat at a restaurant called “The Elephant” in Salzburg, where he noticed small wooden carvings depicting the real journey made by an Indian elephant in 1551 from Lisbon to Vienna. Saramago’s realisation that “there could be a story in this” is pure understatement: he offers us not only a story but an entire philosophy.

When King Joao III decides to give Solomon to the Hapsburg archduke, Maximilian, life for the elephant and his mahout Subhro changes forever. The Austrian Archduke decrees that Subhro be known as Fritz, and Solomon becomes Suleiman, although to his mahout he could just as well as be the god Ganesh. Saramago’s prose flows steadily, with a minimum of punctuation, echoing the ambling pace of the elephant across the plains of Castille, and then north from Genoa and over the Alps.

The story reveals flashes of comedy, the warmth of Subhro’s compassion and a profound understanding of human frailty and fate. Theology was ever present in Reformation Europe, and when Solomon obligingly performs a “miracle” in Padua by kneeling before the cathedral to please the delegates at the Council of Trent, the protestant archduke is less than impressed, especially when he finds that “Fritz” has made a small fortune on the side. However, even the archduke is eventually won over by the gentle pachyderm and the total dedication of the man who cares for him. This is a delightful book that will become a classic.

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The Elephant’s Journey

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 comparison, “The Elephant’s Journey” is a lighthearted romp. It draws from another wellspring of Saramago’s artistry, his intense love for his maternal grandfather, Jerónimo, an illiterate swineherd who introduced him to the magical art of storytelling. Saramago honored him in his 1998 Nobel lecture as “a man who, lying under a fig tree, having at his side José his grandson, could set the universe in motion just with a couple of words.”

“The Elephant’s Journey” begins in 1551, when Portugal’s Catholic King João III and his wife, Caterina of Austria, send the elephant Solomon as a wedding gift to her cousin, the Lutheran-sympathetic Archduke Maximilian of Austria.

Saramago conjures up a cast of fictional characters to flesh out those based on historic record. First among them is Subhro, Solomon’s mahout or keeper.

“Sitting astride the part of the elephant where neck meets sturdy body and wielding the stick with which he steers his mount,” Saramago writes, the mahout “is about to become the second or third most important character in the story, the first being the elephant Solomon.” (The third is the Archduke Maximilian, who shows up halfway through the book with his “peacock’s tail of court parasites.”)

Subhro is a canny man who would be near the bottom of the rigid hierarchy were he not outside it. To keep his job and preserve Solomon’s health and safety, he must be prepared to match wits with everyone he encounters, including the Portuguese captain leading the retinue and the Austrian archduke. Early on, he persuades the captain to rearrange the convoy, putting the slow-moving oxen carrying Solomon’s feed and water in front of the dozens of cavalry and porters.

Saramago has rendered his mahout so intensely observant, independent-minded and wily when dealing with authority that he would fit into modern times. Anyone faced with an autocratic boss will recognize that moment when Subhro, renamed Fritz halfway through the journey by the archduke, shrewdly assesses his new master: “…the captain of the Portuguese cavalry was a man with whom one could speak, a friend, not an authoritarian archduke, who, aside from being Charles the Fifth’s son-in-law, has no other obvious merits to recommend him.”

The road to Vienna is fraught with dangers, including a pack of wolves that imagines “how lucky it would be to have at its disposal all those tons of meat just outside the lair” and deadly alpine passes. For the most part, the gigantic Solomon maintains his placid nature, bedazzling all who witness his passing. One village priest calls upon the elephant to collaborate in a faux miracle; another attempts an exorcism. And Solomon gently calms a panicked crowd by performing a striking act of compassion.

“The Elephant’s Journey” is a tale rich in irony and empathy, regularly interrupted by witty reflections on human nature and arch commentary on the powerful who insult human dignity. Reading Saramago’s dense narrative, an almost continuous outpouring of words with no paragraphs, sentences or quotation marks, I think of his grandfather’s voice, peopling the night with suspenseful stories of “legends, apparitions, terrors, unique episodes, old deaths, scuffles with sticks and stones, the words of our forefathers, an untiring rumor of memories.”

And what will happen when the elephant reaches Vienna?

Saramago gives the mahout the ultimate, still timely, lines: “There’ll be a lot of applause, a lot of people crowding the streets, and then they’ll forget all about him. That’s the law of life: Triumph and oblivion.”

Ciabattari is a regular contributor to NPR.org and the Daily Beast, among many publications. The author of “Stealing the Fire,” she serves as president of the National Book Critics Circle .

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The Elephant’s Journey

The Portuguese Nobel Prize winner’s delightful posthumous novel recounts the travels of an Indian elephant named Solomon as he goes from Lisbon to Vienna as a gift of the King of Portugal to his cousin the Archduke Maximilian, in 1551. Saramago avoids the fussy conventions of historical fiction by employing a talky style in which dialogue flows across pages in endless run-on sentences. The hero is the stoic elephant keeper Subhro, who endures an ignominious renaming as Fritz halfway through the trip and all manner of Catholic malfeasance: there is an attempted elephant exorcism and, in Padua, a priestly miracle-faking intended to combat the spread of Protestantism. Saramago as narrator is a constant, self-deprecating presence. How, he wonders, can we possibly visualize a journey “in the sixteenth century, when there were no roads or gas stations, hot snacks and cups of coffee”? ♦

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The Elephant's Journey, By Jose Saramago, trans. Margaret Jull Costa

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The year before José Saramago's untimely death in June was among the most prolific of his intensely active literary life. The Portuguese Nobel laureate was "supposed to have died" from organ failure 18 months earlier, and this book is dedicated to his wife: "To Pilar, who wouldn't let me die". It is the most folkloric – fairy-tale rather than whimsical – of the output won by cheating death. Typically, the other books are each in a different genre: Small Memories is a childhood memoir; A Notebook is a blog of sorts; and Cain, yet to appear in English, the kind of legendary novel in which Saramago has specialised, alternating angry with celebratory passions.

There the resemblances begin. Increasingly, Saramago refused to discriminate between fact and fiction, memoir and myth. Not for nothing in Iberia is the same word – historia – used for both a story and history. So this imaginative tale of an elephant's journey from Lisbon to Vienna in 1551, accompanied by his Goan mahout Subhro (who changes name to Fritz en route), is larded with real cathedrals and royals and eventful episodes, many far more fantastical than the imposing miracles the great pachyderm is called upon to perform en route.

There can be no doubting Saramago's love of animals: they (particularly his dogs) have appeared regularly in his books, and in A Notebook he launched a campaign for Susi, the maltreated cow elephant in Barcelona Zoo. In June 2009, he also recorded how, together with companions, he followed the elephant Solomon's tracks on "an arbitrary itinerary", the idea being "to go away...[and] weave a story out of our travels". The Elephant's Journey takes up the tale, tongue firmly in cheek, spuriously explaining that the Archduke Maximilian – the fortunate recipient of such a giant gift from King João III of Portugal – "decided to make such a journey at this time of year, but that's how it is set down in history, as an incontrovertible, documented fact, supported by historians and confirmed by the novelist..."

Intentionally, it is the diversions that make the voyage so worthwhile. Saramago's favourite preoccupations, his love of politics and loathing of religion (and his strictures on each), are reiterated through the words of Subhro: born a Hindu, baptised a Christian, a pacifist and philosopher. Syncretism is all, as the Holy Trinity is redesigned as a Quartet (to include the Blessed Virgin Mary). The miraculous birth and resurrection of Ganesh marks him out as truly Christ-like; and Brahma and God, if not identical, at least are on speaking terms.

But it is Solomon (or Suleiman) the elephant who remains the hero: "painfully lifting his heavy legs, one, two, one, two" through heat or snow, never lapsing either physically or morally, even during Subhro's (now Fritz's) lamentable fall from grace as he succumbs to temptation. So the story will forever win out over history as "thanks to the inexhaustible generosity of the imagination, we erase faults, fill in lacunae as best we can, forge passages through blind alleys, and invent keys to doors that have never even had locks". Saramago may damn history as "one long succession of missed opportunities" but here he has seized every possible opening to turn an unlikely tale of a transalpine hike into something far larger even than its elephantine subject.

Amanda Hopkinson is professor of literary translation at the University of East Anglia

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Review: The Elephant's Journey, by José Saramago

This article was published more than 13 years ago. Some information may no longer be current.

Jose Saramago at a reading in 2006 IVAN GARCIA/AFP / Getty Images

Historical fiction, whether of the popular or more rigorous variety, tends to open with a bang: Philippa Gregory's The Other Boleyn Girl , for example, opens with a beheading, and The Constant Princess with a gigantic fire in a military camp; even Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall begins with the horrendous beating of the young Thomas Cromwell by his drunken brute of a father.

By contrast, José Saramago's The Elephant's Journey - set, as are the aforementioned novels, in Renaissance Europe - starts in a rather pedantic way with the King and Queen of Portugal in their unexciting "marital bed," discussing the possibility of offering their elephant, Solomon, as a wedding gift to the Archduke and Archduchess of Austria. What follows is an account of the journey of Solomon, his mahout Subhro and the various porters, soldiers and nobility who accompany them on the sometimes tedious, sometimes perilous journey from Belem to Valladolid, and across the Alps to Vienna.

Saramago is equally concerned with describing practicalities - the search for adequate water, fodder and shelter for the hard-driven elephant and men - and evoking the "inner changes wrought by the journey," changes experienced by Subhro, the Portuguese commanding officer, and perhaps Solomon himself (though, as the narrator insists, no human can ever know what goes on in an elephant's head).

In the process, we are led to consider the differences between ignorance and false knowledge, and between the grand narrative of history and "wretched reality." Saramago insists on the impossibility of historical fiction that aims to procure for the reader a ringside seat at the most thrilling moments of the past. When, for example, we read of the elephant and his entourage struggling across the icy Brenner Pass, how can we claim to experience the danger and terror of such a crossing, we who have never made such a journey "in the sixteenth century, when there were no roads or gas stations, hot snacks and cups of coffee, not to mention a motel where you could spend the night in the warm, while outside the storm rages and a lost elephant utters the most anguished of cries."

The Elephant's Journey is a work of great and sly charm, taking its time to weave the nets in which its readers will find themselves delightfully enmeshed. Its mischievous treatment of religious strife (the duel between Lutherans and Counter-Reformationists) and its wry account of the ways in which "lofty personages" are kept from learning about the less perfumed aspects of reality (no Lear-on-the-heath moments for the Archduke of Austria, who is spared any stepping in elephant droppings) are equally engaging. Above all, it is the relationship between Solomon and Subhro - "star-crossed lovers" and suspect "others" in the eyes of the Europeans with whom they must deal - that makes this narrative so compelling.

"[E]ery elephant contains two elephants, one who learns what he's taught and another who insists on ignoring it all, How do you know, When I realized that I'm just like the elephant, that a part of me learns and the other part ignores everything I've learned, and the longer I live, the more I ignore, Your word games are beyond me, It's not me playing games with words, it's them playing games with me."

This is quintessential Saramago, not just the idiosyncratic punctuation (which soon ceases to disconcert us) but also the interplay of proverbial wisdom with a postmodern self-referentiality that eschews coy or flashy effects.

"The greatest disrespect we can show for reality. … when attempting the pointless task of describing a landscape is to do so with words that are not our own and never were, by which we mean words that have already appeared on millions of pages and in millions of mouths before our turn to use them finally comes."

These are, of course, the words of a writer at the end of a substantial and glorious career, yet when he declares, "Words fail me," it is not that he is suffering from exhaustion. He makes this declaration "[b]cause words really do fail us" in translating the variety, complexity and unexpected possibilities of life: possibilities that comprehend both the extraordinary journey of an elephant from India to Europe and also the death of that same elephant a mere two years after he reaches Vienna.

One of the most captivating moments in The Elephant's Journey deals with Solomon's parting with the porters who have carried his food and water on the journey to the Spanish border: On one of the porters, Solomon, bestows "caresses that seemed almost human, such was the gentleness and tenderness implicit in every movement. For the first time in the history of humanity, an animal was bidding farewell, in the literal sense, to a few human beings, as if he owed them friendship and respect, an idea unconfirmed by the moral precepts in our codes of conduct, but which can perhaps be found inscribed in letters of gold in the fundamental laws of the elephantine race."

Acts of leave-taking are especially poignant in this, Saramago's last work: As we reach the end of this brief but rich novel, we cannot help but feel profound regret at having to quit the company not only of Solomon and his Mahout, but also of José Saramago, who died this year at the age of 88.

Janice Kulyk Keefer is professor of English at the University of Guelph; her most recent novel is The Ladies' Lending Library.

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Millican Dalton: A Sublime Midlife Crisis

The relevance of a 20th century cave-dweller to environmental aesthetics., wednesday, 23 december 2020.

At the mouth of the cave at Borrowdale, May 2020. Photograph: Lewis Eaton.

On a swelteringly hot day in the North Western Fells of The Lake District, the gaping mouth of a cave offered itself as a refuge and swallowed us mercifully into its cool damp interior. Caves are otherworldly places. This particular cave, set into the hillside of Castle Crag, allows you to peer out at the gently swaying trees and glimmering daylight of the outside world from a viewing point void of light and sound. The daytrip itself had been to seek refuge in The Lakes; an attempt at replacing the stagnancy of a locked-down city summer with a more welcome, less claustrophobic, kind of tranquillity. We spent a few minutes scrambling around on the siltstone, marvelling at the height of the cave walls and exchanging the obligatory comments about feeling small in big spaces. On leaving, I noticed a large, flat stone covered in scrawlings. At the centre in neat, deeply-etched letters read ‘Don’t Waste Words, Jump to Conclusions’ with dozens of smaller sections of writing surrounding this. Each gave names and dates, with many faded with age and dissolving back into the stone’s surface. It was from a frantic Googling during the car ride home that I came to find out we had happened across a sort-of pilgrimage place for hikers: the cave in which a man had lived out his summers for over forty consecutive years.

In 1904, at the age of thirty-six, Millican Dalton gave up his life as an insurance clerk in London in order to dedicate himself to The Great Outdoors. Having spent part of his childhood in Nenthead, the North Pennines, he found life and work in the capital stifling in comparison. From then on Dalton split his year, spending the summer months in the cave under Castle Crag and winters in a canvas hut in Buckinghamshire. Far from your conventional hermit, Dalton was an active and sociable member of the community. He organised camping excursions for the outdoors novice which included teaching hiking, rock climbing, rafting and how to forage for food. What I found extraordinary for the time was that these excursions didn’t exclude women, with one of Dalton’s advertisements for a mountaineering course stating his views bluntly: “Ladies are welcome to the camp. There is nothing new in ladies camping, the custom being at least 10,000 years old.” This rare indiscriminate approach led to Dalton forging a long-lasting friendship with geologist Mabel Barker, who over the years consistently recommended Dalton’s courses to women students and friends.

Dalton and Barker atop a needle, 1913. The Mable Barker Collection.

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A Man and His Elephant

Your worst academic embarrassment in high school may have started with an English teacher demanding that you share your insight into Moby Dick by telling the class what the great white whale stood for. You cringed because, although you actually read the book, you completely whiffed on the symbolic meaning of that stupid fish. After allowing you to twist in the wind for the longest minute of your life, the teacher turned toward the smartest girl in class, who smoothly spouted out what the symbolism of that stupid fish…no, mammal!…lent to the meaning of the entire novel. Wait, whales are mammals?

You can exorcise that particular demon of meaning with Jose Saramago’s The Elephant’s Journey . The Nobel Laureate from Portugal died this past summer and this novel, originally published in 2008, is just now hitting U.S. bookstores in an excellent English translation by Margaret Jull Costa. The novel chronicles the journey of an Indian elephant named Solomon who finds himself lumbering from Lisbon to Vienna under the direction of his mahout (handler), Subhro in the fall and early winter of 1551-1552. I say “lumbering,” because no one can whisk an elephant anywhere, even if the elephant himself is amenable to a rapid change of scenery.

So, straight up — Solomon is a big symbol with tusks and his own notions about what he will and won’t do and at what pace. What does he mean? I can offer a suggestion or two, but before I do, let me state that the journey is by far the most important component of this novel. Solomon’s role is less to bring meaning to the story than it is to provide context for the actions and motivations of its human characters.

Solomon’s journey begins when the King of Portugal, Joao III, in need of a quick wedding gift to the heir to the Habsburg throne, remembers being given an Indian elephant a few years earlier. Solomon and Subhro, forgotten by the court and the people by this point, are spiffed up in short order with a good scrubbing for the elephant and a new suit of clothes for his interlocutor. Subhro is less a symbol, by the way, than he is the intellectual center of the novel, a Bengali mahout stranded far, far away from his native land who has the low cunning of Sancho Panza and a deep love for his four-ton charge.

Tossed to the Austrian heir, Maximilian, as a kind of consolation gift (we just gave fruit cakes to friends and family who appeared on the doorstep unbidden at Christmas time), Subhro and Solomon travel across the face of Europe from Lisbon to Spain, by ship to Genoa and through the narrow passes of the Alps in winter to reach Vienna. In the process, Maximilian doles out new names to the duo, Suleiman and Fritz. As the Habsburg heir tells Subhro, Fritz is a common name in Austria, but he’ll be the only Fritz with an elephant. Neither elephant nor mahout ever take to their new identities.

Saramago’s novels tend to wander from one topic to another, but the main focus here is how ridiculous and short-sighted human behavior can become when it is invisibly channeled by social and cultural forces. Human folly is the true raging beast in the novel (Solomon’s ill-temper is confined to gently kicking a priest who is trying to exorcise demons from the pachyderm) and the elephant becomes a mute co-conspirator in schemes to create a false miracle that will revive the flagging postmortem career of St. Antony of Padua and make Maximilian the center of attention in the Austrian empire when he descends from the mountains with his new wedding gift. Subhro, who can talk quite reasonably and at length, spends much of his time caring for Solomon and defending himself and his charge from the idiocies of various individuals and social institutions, a not-inconsequential task in a Europe newly-riven between Catholicism and Protestantism, where institutional suspicion can bring calamity down on the head of any man who stands out in any manner. And an elephant, if nothing else, does draw attention.

Saramago makes no attempt to get inside Solomon’s head, which relieves us of wading through the internal dialogue of a character whose entire interests consist of eating, bathing and deciding whether he will do whatever damn-fool thing his human companions ask him to do. But he does give us hints of what might be going on in Solomon’s heart. Throughout his long trip, the elephant does try to please Subhro and their emotional bond is one of the book’s many delights. There is something between humans and elephants that transcends the boundaries of species.

The Elephant’s Journey is actually one grown-up novel that older kids might enjoy reading for themselves or hearing read aloud. There’s no profanity in the novel and Saramago’s ability to wring delightful dialogue out of his characters will charm just about anybody. The compassion and love for a flawed humanity he brings to his work is much too rare in a literary world and broader society that seem to devalue these qualities at a time when they are desperately needed.

What’s that? I didn’t explain what Solomon represents? Trust me — you won’t have any trouble figuring it out on your own. Let your wife read it and you two can spend a few minutes at the end of a day trying to work through your own ideas about Solomon’s symbolism. Remember your wife? The smart girl in your high school English class who had Moby Dick all figured out and made you feel like a moron? Yeah, she got a lot cooler after you two went to college.

Sam Stowe is a writer and poet who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, and has a life-long love of elephants.

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The Elephant's Journey : Book summary and reviews of The Elephant's Journey by Jose Saramago

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The Elephant's Journey

by Jose Saramago

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Published Sep 2010 224 pages Genre: Historical Fiction Publication Information

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In 1551, King João III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. The elephant’s journey from Lisbon to Vienna was witnessed and remarked upon by scholars, historians, and ordinary people. Out of this material, José Saramago has spun a novel already heralded as "a triumph of language, imagination, and humor" ( El País ). Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin in dismal conditions, forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds. When it occurs to the king and queen that an elephant would be an appropriate wedding gift, everyone rushes to get them ready: Subhro is given two new suits of clothes and Solomon a long overdue scrub. Accompanied by the Archduke, his new wife, and the royal guard, our unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformation and civil wars. They make their way through the storied cities of northern Italy: Genoa, Piacenza, Mantua, Verona, Venice, and Trento, where the Council of Trent is in session. They brave the Alps and the terrifying Isarco and Brenner Passes; they sail across the Mediterranean Sea and up the Inn River (elephants, it turns out, are natural sailors). At last they make their grand entry into the imperial city. The Elephant’s Journey is a delightful, witty tale of friendship and adventure.

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"This charming tale of an elephant given by the 16th-century Portuguese king João III to the Archduke of Austria has much to recommend it, despite its being a minor work from the late Nobel laureate." - Publishers Weekly "Starred Review. Solomon's trek across Europe, across mountains and rivers, accompanied by his Hindu keeper and a host of other retainers and attendants, is followed in this extremely amusing, historically resonant, fablelike, and technically challenging narrative." - Booklist "While Saramago’s tale veers into tedium now and then, it nevertheless firmly establishes the pachyderm in our hearts along with all the other great animal heroes in literature." - Library Journal "A triumph of language, imagination and humor." - El Pais . "A Quixote-like journey, in the company of porters, guards, priests, officials, lords and ladies, across a Europe riven by the Reformation and civil wars. And at the same time, a meditation, a reflection - typically Saramagian - on humanity, on its flaws and its weaknesses, on power, on friendship..." - La Repubblica . "[Saramogo's] funniest, earthiest, most tongue-in-cheek book...[It] transforms a travel narrative into a dazzling human comedy, full of laughter, feeling, and wisdom." - Le Monde

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Jose Saramago Author Biography

Photo: José Frade

José Saramago was born in 1922 in Azinhaga, Portugal, the son of rural laborers. He grew up in great poverty in Lisbon, and was forced to abandon school at the age of 12 in order to earn a living. Saramago was spent 2 years training as a technician,did a number of manual jobs before becoming a journalist, translator, and eventually a writer . In 1969 he joined the Communist Party of Portugal, which was forbidden during the military dictatorship, but he also criticized the party. In the 1970s Saramago supported himself mostly by translation works, and since 1979 he has devoted himself entirely to writing. Following the publication of his most controversial book, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ , he faced intense criticism from members of the country's Catholic community, and ...

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Jose Saramago Translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010 ISBN # 978-0-547-35258-9 205 pages.

This time, however, padua is the first with the news, because it isn�t every day that an elephant solemnly kneels at the door of a basilica, thus bearing witness to the fact that the message of the gospels is addressed to the whole animal kingdom and that the regrettable drowning of those hundreds of pig in the sea of galilee could be put down to the inexperience, occurring as it did before the cogs of the mechanism for performing miracles were properly oiled.

It�s hard to understand just why the archduke maximilian should have decided to make such a journey at this time of year, but that is how it�s set down in history, as an incontrovertible, documented fact, supported by historians and confirmed by the novelist, who must be forgiven for taking certain liberties with names, not only because it is his right to invent, but also because he had to fill in certain gaps so that the sacred coherence of the story was not lost. It must be said that history is always selective, and discriminatory too, selecting from life only what society deems to be historical and scorning the rest, which is precisely where we might find the true explanation of facts, of things, of wretched reality itself. In truth, I say to you, it is better to be a novelist, a fiction writer, a liar.

the archduke began to think that perhaps he had said too much, that his words, if the mahout let his tongue run away with him, would be of no benefit whatsoever to the delicate political balance he has been trying to keep between luther's reforms and the ongoing conciliar response. After all, as henry the fourth of france will say in the not too distant future, paris is well worth a mass. Even so, a look of painful melancholy appears on maximilian's slender face, perhaps because few things in life hurt as much as the awareness that one has betrayed the ideas of one's youth. The archduke told himself that he was old enough not to cry over spilled milk, that the superabundant udders of the catholic church were there, as always, waiting for a pair of skillful hands to milk them, and events so far had shown that his archducal hands had a certain talent for that diplomatic milking, as long as the said church believed that the results of those matters of faith would, in time, bring them some advantage.

My Week With Drunk Elephant’s D-Bronzi Drops

All I want is to find a safe and easy way of looking a little more tanned . (Applying SPF 30+ every day, even in the depths of winter, has its downsides.) I have neutral-toned Southeast Asian skin that browns quickly, so I’ve found that products that promise a natural glow end up looking unnatural on me — no surprise, given so much of the skin-care market is geared toward Caucasian complexions. My current solution — Dr. Jart+ Premium BB Beauty Balm to tone down any spots and red patches and then a dusting of Nars Laguna Bronzing Powder across my cheeks and forehead for color — gives glow but not enough hydration for my mid-30s skin.

Meanwhile, my TikTok feed is filled with videos of teenagers talking about Drunk Elephant’s D-Bronzi Anti-Pollution Sunshine Drops, a liquid bronzer that claims to imbue skin with a natural-looking tan. I’ve been burned by a tan in a bottle in the past (Nivea Gradual Tan came out streaky and orange on me), but D-Bronzi, which is made from raw cocoa powder, says it’s been designed to “flatter every complexion” and has moisturizing ingredients like virgin marula and black-currant-seed oils to boot.

But these teens are glowing and hyperbolic. “Look how tan I am!” they crow . While I don’t exactly trust a 19-year-old to tell me what my 35-year-old skin needs, the hydration D-Bronzi promises is enough for me to test it out. I take it on a trial run across a typical week — parties, work calls, and a night hosting the premiere for Netflix’s Three Body Problem .

I start testing D-Bronzi right before I head out for a friend’s birthday , following the instructions to mix one to two drops of the gloopy liquid into a pump’s worth of light moisturizer, before applying it all over my face and neck. Even though D-Bronzi is described as “fragrance-free,” I do register a slight scent, almost like wood chip — not entirely unpleasant, though it does dissipate quickly. It feels weirdly primitive to mix and smear this peachy-brownish potion all over my face with my fingers. When I’m done, my actual skin tone doesn’t look too different, though it does look subtly warmer, like I’ve been lit from within by a warm glow. I apply my usual light makeup on top, grab my handbag, and head out for the night. When I get back — having ended the night in a sweaty basement club — the D-Bronzi effect is still there, but it feels unpleasantly like a layer of heavy foundation is sitting on top of my face. Not exactly the hydration I was looking for. The next morning, I wash my face with my Cerave cleanser and squeeze a few drops into my Dermaviduals moisturizer. It immediately feels much more comfortable on my skin this time around (I think the cleanse helped), and the sheer wash of color is more noticeable in the daytime. It doesn’t, however, cover up any imperfections or redness — I still have to use my Nars radiant creamy concealer for that.

It’s time to make a smoothie. According to both Drunk Elephant and TikTok, I should be mixing the drops with other Drunk Elephant products, like the Protini Polypeptide Cream. Unfortunately, I don’t own any other Drunk Elephant products. The closest I have to the Protini moisturizer is my f avorite sunscreen, Biore UV Aqua Rich Watery Sunscreen SPF 50+. (They both have a gel-cream texture.) On we go. This time round, the gel texture of the sunscreen pairs perfectly with the drops and it sinks in much better. While one drop doesn’t quite give the same tanned effect as two or three, it lifts my skin and makes me look, uh, less tired and sleepy on Zoom calls. The drops give a kind of glowy haze that I’ve never achieved with bronzer — I’m hypnotized by how glossy my skin looks on-camera. I promise I was still paying attention on the call, though.

Total disaster. According to Drunk Elephant, you should be able to mix D-Bronzi with other serum, oil, or cream. This time, I mix it with Violette_fr’s Boum-Boum Milk, a creamy spray that you can use as a serum and moisturizer. I immediately get the ick from my improvised potion. The Boum-Boum Milk usually feels light and velvety on my skin, but adding D-Bronzi has turned it into a tacky film that feels as if it’s been plopped on my face like a layer of old cheese. I end up feeling so grossed out that I wash it off before I even leave the house.

I am dancing in a sweaty room at yet another birthday party (why is everyone born in March?) when I have a revelation. These drops are not a tan, they’re a bronzer — you have to treat them like makeup, rather than skin care. I am pleased with my insight, but my friends are too busy panicking over not getting enough birthday candles for the joint birthday cake. When I get home at four in the morning, I’m not surprised that my D-Bronzi/Biore sunscreen glow has faded — I haven’t used any kind of setting spray or powder.

Tonight I’m hosting a big Netflix premiere, which means it’s time for a full face of makeup, setting powder, the works. I reach for the drops. The glow is irresistible. I stick with my now go-to combo of D-Bronzi and Biore sunscreen for my base and apply my usual Dr. Jart+ BB Cream on top before using my Fenty contour stick, Nars Orgasm quad blush and Laura Mercier setting powder. My base actually matches up pretty well with the BB cream’s tint (I’m surprised!), and the shades for all my other makeup products still suit my skin tone, even with D-Bronzi on — this has never happened with other fake-looking tan products I’ve used. I post a nervous pre-show selfie from the bathroom of the fancy venue and get a ton of flame emojis from friends. When I get home at midnight, I have to triple cleanse to get everything off and I remember why I hate wearing a full face of makeup.

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To help build a family tree, single mom Amelia tracks down her daughter's biological father. It becomes a journey of trust, love, and discovering the meaning of family. To help build a family tree, single mom Amelia tracks down her daughter's biological father. It becomes a journey of trust, love, and discovering the meaning of family. To help build a family tree, single mom Amelia tracks down her daughter's biological father. It becomes a journey of trust, love, and discovering the meaning of family.

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'The Idea of You' Review: Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine Rom-Com Goes Down Smooth

The 'Princess Diaries' alum plays a single mother falling for a pop star in this charming age-gap romance.

The Big Picture

• The Idea of You offers a fresh take on a well-worn story, focusing on emotional connection over power dynamics.
• Anne Hathaway's character undergoes a compelling coming-of-age journey, challenging perceptions of a midlife crisis.
• The film's focus on romance overshadows the boy band elements, leaving Nicholas Galitzine's character underserved.

It is a spectacle to see a musician onstage, dancing and singing their heart out to a crowd of people just in absolute frenzy over the performance. The starstruck feeling only intensifies when fans begin to dream about meeting that pop artist on a casual outing and fantasize about a meant-to-be romance. Yet, in The Idea of You , a book-to-screen adaptation directed by Michael Showalter , the concept of falling in love with a famous heartthrob is taken in an entirely different direction. Instead of a fan stumbling upon their idol, a nonchalant single mom (played by Anne Hathaway ) takes her teenage daughter to meet a boy band and ends up enamored by one of its lead singers (who she is only familiar with because her daughter used to be obsessed with them in middle school). As you might've guessed, the feeling is mutual, and like any traditional rom-com, love is in the air. However, beyond the romance onscreen, the film's originality lies in its ability to offer an alternate view of the term " coming-of-age ."

The Idea of You (2024)

Solène, a 40-year-old single mom, begins an unexpected romance with 24-year-old Hayes Campbell, the lead singer of August Moon, the hottest boy band on the planet.

What Is 'The Idea of You' About?

Solène, a just-turned-40 single mother, devotes her life to raising her teenage daughter Izzy ( Ella Rubin ) and keeping her art gallery in Silver Lake up and running. As she prepares for a camping trip, determined to disconnect from the world while Izzy enjoys Coachella with high school friends and her father/Solène's ex, Daniel (played by Reid Scott ), Solène is caught off guard by a sudden change of plans.

Instead of staying inside a tent next to a campfire, Solène ends up at one of the hottest music festivals of the year and happens to bump into a pop star on the way to the bathroom. The artist's name is Hayes Campbell ( Nicholas Galitzine ), a member of a major boy band called August Moon (whose sound and formation give major One Direction vibes). With an organic meet-cute and a lasting impression, things escalate between the two. However, their love bubble doesn't last long as the paparazzi and internet scrutiny takes a toll on them. This leads the couple to question whether their desire to be together is causing more harm than good.

'The Idea of You' Is Fueled By Its Leads and a Different Outlook on the Age-Gap Romance

It can be easy to be judgmental of a film like this at first glance when thinking about previous portrayals of older women dating younger men onscreen. There is a common thread of female characters preying on younger boys, often using their position of power to control their partners (who are usually minors) into being dependent on them. What sets The Idea of You apart is the natural connection that Solène and Hayes have. Their love isn't just about physical attraction (although they spend plenty of time in hotel rooms) and does not emphasize power imbalance. Both protagonists meet each other at a time when they are most vulnerable and in need of change.

Solène still feels shattered by her ex-husband's betrayal, while Hayes was propelled to stardom so early on that he often wonders whether his career is fleeting (even Izzy is no longer into his music like before). The two are on the same page about what they are in search of in the dating realm, despite their age difference. Showalter and Jennifer Westfeldt 's script has a keen eye in making this story far from a cautionary tale, giving way for Hathaway and Galitzine's undeniable chemistry to flourish. Their scenes together fuel the film with a pitch-perfect mix of charm and heat.

The actors have a lot of experience in the rom-com genre ( having starred in classics like The Princess Diaries and modern hits like Red, White, and Royal Blue ), which is a valuable asset in making this project worthwhile for viewers craving more organic and well-executed love onscreen. Although The Idea of You will land on streaming instead of getting a theatrical run, it is easy to imagine viewers at home giggling every time the couple shares a passionate kiss and sympathizing with them when the internet offers brutal judgments (especially targeted towards Solène) about their bond.

'The Idea of You' Is Also an Authentic Coming-of-Age Journey

This rom-com also deconstructs the perception that a 40-year-old woman has learned everything she needs to in life. Hathaway's character might've gained experience throughout the years when it comes to motherhood, but she is still lost in a dating scene with a limited pool. Hayes doesn't just represent her boldness in love but also ensures this is a coming-of-age journey.

What is deemed by most of the online critics as a midlife crisis becomes an awakening for Solène. It's not just about her exploring the world on private jets next to her musician boyfriend, but rather the mending of her broken heart. Although romance might be the hook here, Hathaway's journey into becoming a confident woman keeps the film interesting. The actress has a magnetism to her that makes it believable that she can be a responsible and nurturing mom, as well as a woman feeling youthful while falling for a younger man.

'The Idea of You's Boy Band Is Left Out in This Two-Person Show

Yet amid the script's nuances and the passion brought to the screen by the two leads, the supporting elements to this narrative feel irrelevant. Galitzine does have the looks, talent, and stage presence that check off the boxes for a boy band member, but the boy band itself feels like a one-man show. The music, written by Savan Kotecha , is boy band material ( after all, he also wrote music for One Direction ), but the emphasis on only Galitzine's vocals makes the whole idea of him being part of a group, rather than a solo act, unconvincing.

Although the headlines about Hayes and Solène's relationship blame her for taking his eyes off his career, there is no insight whatsoever from other August Moon members or managers into Hayes' love life, which limits the character's arc aside from the romance that unfolds onscreen. There is also barely any interaction between Hayes and Izzy, which doesn't make sense considering that she is Solène's daughter and greatest priority. In other words, sometimes it seems like the character's only function is to be a famous boyfriend. He never truly interacts with his partner's social circle and rarely engages with his own (except for Coachella, as well as a brief scene by the pool with the rest of the band in Europe).

Showalter's The Idea of You scores points when it comes to providing a nuanced view of an age-gap romance and candid performances from both Hathaway and Galitzine. Although their romance is fully developed during the film's runtime, and Solène undergoes a compelling coming-of-age journey, the music and boy band elements here don't add depth to Hayes' arc. Nonetheless, the adaptation's charming qualities outweigh the flaws, proving to be one of the better rom-coms to come out in recent years. It's enjoyable, sexy, and features a romance worth rooting for — because the only red flag here is the public's reaction to their relationship. What starts as a fling becomes something more by the end, with a pleasing finale that diverges from Robinne Lee 's novel .

Anne Hathaway and Nicholas Galitzine's age-gap romance is fueled by their chemistry, but underserves one of its protagonists.

• This rom-com brings a respectable and nuanced take on an older woman falling for a younger man.
• Hathaway's character shows that coming-of-age isn't just for the tweens.
• Hathaway and Galitzine use their rom-com experience to their advantage in this film.
• Hayes' character arc is impacted by the lack of emphasis on his music career and boy band involvement.
• Aside from the romance, Galitzine doesn't have much to work with in comparison to Hathaway.

The Idea of You is available to stream on Prime Video in the U.S. starting May 2.

Watch on Prime Video

The Journey of a Lifetime: Biology Professor Introduces Augustana Students to Native Country of Kenya

Patrick Vogel ‘26 always knew he wanted to study abroad at some point during his time at Augustana — possibly during his junior or senior year.

That quickly changed after Vogel learned about the opportunity to take a January Interim (J-Term) course called Glimpses at the Intersection of Global Food Security & Education. Taking the course would mean traveling with Assistant Professor of Biology Dr. Sally Mallowa to her native country of Kenya, along with Instructor of Education Kristin Grinager ‘97, who is a world traveler with experience teaching English as a second language (ESL) and human relations. 

“I think there’s a study abroad for everyone, but not every study abroad is for every person — that’s definitely something to sit down and decipher before embarking on a journey like this,” said Vogel.

And, what a journey it was.

The biology major from Sioux Falls, who is also minoring in chemistry and neuroscience, described the experience as “life changing.”

In their nearly month-long trip, Vogel and 13 other AU students learned how food security, education, health systems and policies impact the welfare, decision-making and resiliency of the people in Kenya. They did so by immersing themselves in the local communities they visited. And, in turn, they made authentic connections. 

“I was trying to prepare my heart and my mind to be 100% open,” explained Vogel. “I think it’s difficult to talk about the trip and all the experiences without first going to the people. The experiences we had and the people we met changed my worldview.”

“I was amazed at how gracious and kind everyone was in Kenya,” said Grinager. “The Augustana students were amazing. The time in the schools was really fun. I told the students, ‘I know you’re not all education majors,’ but I was so impressed with what they did in the classrooms and with the students.”

Among many other experiences in Kenya’s capital city, the group visited the Giraffe Centre and  David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust , a rescue and rehabilitation program for orphaned elephants and rhinos, as well as the  Kenya Agricultural & Livestock Research Organization (KALRO) , where farmers are looking at innovative ways to make gluten-free products from cassava root. 

The group then visited Nyanza, near the shores of Lake Victoria, to learn about the local culture, including a stop at Kit-Mikayi — a famous, sacred stone — and Maseno Equator Point.

The next stop was Siaya County where Mallowa and her husband’s villages are located. The group spent two weeks engaged in service-learning, which included stops at the homes of community members and activities with teachers and students in local schools. Here, they learned more about the education system and what food security means to the people they visited. 

The Augustana students were also involved in a ceremony in which secondary school students were awarded tuition scholarships necessary to attend Mudhiero High School. The organization that supports these scholarships was created by Mallowa and named after her parents,  Sam and Hannah Obura , alumni of the high school. The AU community has also been known to support these scholarships, including Augustana’s TriBeta Honor Society and Biology Club.

“We certainly saw a lot of people who work really hard to put food on the table for their families, to have a place to live and then send their kids to school. I think one of the things that stuck out to all of us, especially the Augie students, was the appreciation that students had for education,” noted Grinager.

“It’s $77 for the year to go to school and that can be difficult for some families,” explained Grinager. “It was, at times, overwhelming to think about how easily we spend $77 — all those little things we take for granted. It’s always good to be reminded how lucky we are really by chance.”

Augustana students then got a glimpse at how education affects health by visiting a health- centered organization called the  Matibabu Foundation . In an event celebrating the organization’s 20-year partnership with  Tiba Foundation Champions of the Boda Girls , the students were able to attend the opening of a new hospital with many dignitaries, including the U.S. ambassador to Kenya and the founders of FIGS Scrubs. Of course, Mallowa served as emcee of the event. 

“I think everyone in Kenya knows Sally,” joked Grinager. “She’s very well connected and respected. People have just wonderful things to say about her and the work that she’s doing on their behalf to really promote education and help people in Kenya achieve their goals. She provided us opportunities to meet with so many different people, whereas, if we just had been there on our own, we would have missed out on some of those really rich experiences.”

The last leg of their trip was spent at Jaffrey Academy, a private school in Mombasa.

“You get a holistic view,” explained Mallowa. “If you just went to the slum, a rural school, you could live with the danger of a single story.”

“I hope that they remember that there's not one person or one thing that defines Kenya any more than there is one person or one thing that defines the United States,” Grinager reinforced.

Finally, the group got some downtime with a visit to a marine park and the beach. However, Vogel said his heart remained with the people he had met the days and weeks prior.

“The final week we spent time in Mombasa by the Indian Ocean just doing touristy things and unwinding, but I would give days at the beach for another couple of hours with those kids,” said Vogel. “Many years later, I think that will be true for everyone who went on this trip as things happen in life. There’ll be parts of Kenya that also connect with your experiences,” said Grinager.

This is Mallowa’s second time bringing a group of Augustana students to Kenya for J-Term — the first was in 2022 as part of the  U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs’ (ECA) IDEAS Program to assist colleges and universities in creating, broadening and expanding their study-abroad programming in support of U.S. foreign policy goals. Now, with a second trip behind her, she can’t help but think of what an honor it is to have such a platform.

“It’s a win, a win for everybody — the impact Kenyan and American students have on each other,” said Mallowa. “I think a lot of our students are afraid to embrace their impact. I hope we can normalize seeing Americans in our village, but also that somebody doesn't need to come from America to be that change.

“It’s a different kind of experience for the students, and even for me. I think they will be talking about it for a long time.”

For more information on study away opportunities at Augustana, visit  augie.edu/StudyAway .

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The elephant's journey audio cd – unabridged, june 2, 2020.

A delightful, witty tale of friendship and adventure from prize-winning novelist Jose Saramago.

In 1551, King Joo III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. In Jose Saramago's remarkable and imaginative retelling, Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin in dismal conditions, forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds.

When it occurs to the king and queen that an elephant would be an appropriate wedding gift, everyone rushes to get them ready: Subhro is given two new suits of clothes and Solomon a long overdue scrub. Accompanied by the Archduke, his new wife, and the royal guard, these unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformation and civil wars, witnessed along the way by scholars, historians, and wide-eyed ordinary people as they make their way through the storied cities of northern Italy; they brave the Alps and the terrifying Isarco and Brenner Passes; across the Mediterranean Sea and up the Inn River; and at last, toward their grand entry into the imperial city.

• Language English
• Publisher Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio
• Publication date June 2, 2020
• Dimensions 6.5 x 0.63 x 5.5 inches
• ISBN-10 179973711X
• ISBN-13 978-1799737117
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About the author.

JOSÉ SARAMAGO (1922–2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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• Publisher ‏ : ‎ Audible Studios on Brilliance Audio; Unabridged edition (June 2, 2020)
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Jose saramago.

JOSE SARAMAGO is one of the most acclaimed writers in the world today. He is the author of numerous novels, including All the Names, Blindness, and The Cave. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Tom Moran Is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar review: Vulnerable exploration of a journey from self-hatred to self-fulfilment

Theatre: more than any other factor, the catharsis he is seeking onstage is an attempt to process trauma that he feels stems from an insecure attachment at home.

Winner of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Award in 2023, Moran is an emerging playwright and actor based in Dublin. Photograph: Abbey Theatre

Tom Moran Is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar

Peacock stage, abbey theatre, dublin.

A one-person play is a risky venture. Reduce the elements of any performance to a single contributor and you seem to be inviting danger: everything hangs on the talents of just one individual. Worse yet, the format precludes, by its very nature, the possibility of the kind of back-and-forth dialogue that compels even the most jaded theatre audience’s attention. Given the obvious obstacles that this genre is forced to overcome, those few actors who brave the limelight in solitude must have nerves of steel. Having witnessed the psychological terrain that Tom Moran covers in the space of 70-odd minutes, and in spite of his many other self-confessed flaws, nerve, we can comfortably assert, is not something that he lacks.

Winner of the Arts Council’s Next Generation Award in 2023, Moran is an emerging playwright and actor based in Dublin. Tom Moran Is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar debuted at Dublin Fringe Festival in 2022, winning the Fishamble new-writing award, and is now on as tour of the country, beginning on the Peacock stage at the Abbey Theatre . The timing of the show’s gestation fits neatly with its themes and mode of presentation: the endless months of lockdown, which encouraged a particular form of anxiety-ridden introspection among so many of us, is an essential ingredient of the show’s DNA.

Over the course of the evening, Moran takes the audience on a confessional whistle-stop tour of his childhood and early adulthood in the 1990s and 2000s: Big Brother and getting fingered on Love Island are used as cultural touchstones to orient our feeling for the era during which the impressionable Moran developed into maturity. His major theme, as you may have guessed from the title, is the issue of deception: the deceptions that we invent for others and, more importantly, the deceptions that we maintain for ourselves.

Moran’s parents loom large. More than any other factor, the catharsis he is seeking onstage is an attempt to process trauma that he feels stems from an insecure attachment at home. His father is portrayed as having, in stereotypically Irish fashion, a bone-deep aversion for directly communicating love for his son, though Moran warmly relates that he has learned to pepper his texts with love-heart emojis.

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The playwright’s mother features in a more complicated role: in some of his early reminiscences, especially acute in a memory that unpacks the germ of Moran’s anxiety about body weight, she provides solace and heartfelt affection; and at other, later stages in the narrative, she is revealed as the source of handwritten letters that puncture the emotional safety of his childhood, giving birth to the overwhelming sense of familial precarity that would only be grappled with, years later, during sessions of much-needed therapy.

At times, Moran’s bubbly persona veers into glassy-eyed sadness a little too quickly, and the occasional use of flared lighting to signpost the oncoming of a “serious” emotion is overly artificial, detracting from the naked honesty of those episodes. That said, Moran’s charisma carries the audience through these jagged moments mostly unscathed, and his vulnerable exploration of a journey from self-hatred to self-fulfilment, thanks in no small part to the insights of his therapist, contains pearls of wisdom for those who are open to hearing them.

Tom Moran Is a Big Fat Filthy Disgusting Liar continues at the Abbey Theatre, Dublin, until Saturday, May 25th

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Highlights From the 2024 Tony Nominations: ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ and ‘Stereophonic’ Earn Most Nods

Daniel Radcliffe, Leslie Odom Jr., Sarah Paulson, Jessica Lange, Jeremy Strong and Alicia Keys all opened up about being recognized for their work on and for the stage.

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Michael Paulson

Here’s what to know about the nominations.

A semi-autobiographical Alicia Keys musical and a play about a group of musicians struggling to record an album each got 13 Tony nominations on Tuesday, tying for the most nods in a packed Broadway season when shows need all the help they can get.

The musical, “Hell’s Kitchen,” features some of Keys’s biggest hits as well as new songs by her. The play, “Stereophonic,” David Adjmi’s exploration of creativity and conflict inside a recording studio, is now the most-nominated play in Tony Awards history, besting a record set in 2021 by “Slave Play,” which had 12 nominations.

A star-studded production of “Merrily We Roll Along” that turned a storied Stephen Sondheim flop into one of the season’s biggest hits is favored to win the musical revival category. But it faces several other big revivals, including a lavish production of “Cabaret” starring Eddie Redmayne that got the most nominations of any show in the category, as well as a rollicking revival of “The Who’s Tommy” and a now-closed production of “Gutenberg! The Musical!” that found success with two appealing co-stars.

The two most nominated shows, “Hell’s Kitchen” and “Stereophonic,” opened 24 hours apart less than two weeks ago.

“Stereophonic,” which features songs by Will Butler, formerly of Arcade Fire, had an initial run last fall at the Off Broadway nonprofit Playwrights Horizons. It succeeded despite a three-hour running time and no high-wattage celebrities — powered by strong reviews and word-of-mouth.

“I’m just gobsmacked,” said Adjmi, a longtime downtown playwright whose work has never before made it to Broadway. “I started this play 11 years ago and didn’t know if it would ever even be produced — it was impractical and wildly demanding on every level and I just made it from a place of passion and obsession. To be rewarded at a platform like this is so mind-bogglingly incredible I don’t have words.”

“Hell’s Kitchen,” which had an Off Broadway run starting last fall at the nonprofit Public Theater, is about a 17-year-old girl growing up in Manhattan and struggling to navigate first love, a hunger for independence and a tense relationship with a well-intentioned but overprotective single mother.

“I’m definitely in a deep state of freaking out, in a really great, awesome, grateful way,” said Keys, whose challenges as an adolescent in the 1990s shaped the plot of “Hell’s Kitchen.” “I have felt so connected to the mission of this story. I always felt that there was a purpose, there’s a reason, there’s something important about the story.”

The nominations come at a challenging time for Broadway. Theaters are packed with shows — 36 Tony-eligible shows opened this season, including an unusually large slate of 15 new musicals. But the costs of production have skyrocketed while the number of ticket buyers has fallen since the pandemic.

Here are some other highlights of the nominations:

Daniel Radcliffe finally broke whatever spell had impeded him from getting nominated for a Tony Award. The actor, beloved for his portrayal of Harry Potter in all eight films, has been overlooked by nominators during four previous Broadway outings, but on Tuesday he was recognized for his work in “Merrily We Roll Along.”

“Hell’s Kitchen” now heads into a race for the best musical prize that is unusually competitive , because none of the contenders has broken out as a consensus favorite at the box office or among critics. Just behind “Hell’s Kitchen” in the nominations derby is “The Outsiders,” a musical adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s classic young adult novel, which received 12 nods. The other nominees are “Illinoise,” a narrative dance telling a story of self-discovery, with songs from Sufjan Stevens; “Suffs,” a look at the women’s suffrage movement in the United States; and “Water for Elephants,” based on the novel about a circus romance.

“Stereophonic” appears to be the favorite in the best play race, but is up against four strong competitors: “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding,” “Mary Jane,” “Mother Play” and “Prayer for the French Republic.”

Notably, three of the nominated plays (“Jaja’s,” “Mary Jane” and “Prayer”) were produced on Broadway by a single nonprofit organization, the Manhattan Theater Club , and two of the nominated musicals (“Hell’s Kitchen” and “Suffs”) began at the Public Theater.

Among the screen stars who picked up Tony nods, in addition to Radcliffe and Redmayne, are Jessica Lange, Jim Parsons, Rachel McAdams, Sarah Paulson, Jeremy Strong, Liev Schreiber, Leslie Odom Jr. and Amy Ryan.

The nominations were chosen by a group of 44 people with theatrical expertise (many of them are artists or arts administrators) but no financial stake in the eligible shows. There were originally 60 in the group, but since they are required to see all 36 eligible shows, their number dwindled as some missed shows or developed conflicts of interest.

The Tony Awards, which are presented by the Broadway League and the American Theater Wing, will be presented on June 16. The ceremony is to take place at Lincoln Center, hosted by Ariana DeBose, and broadcast on CBS.

Here’s what we know about the Tony Awards ceremony.

Now that we know who the Tony nominees are, the awards season begins in earnest.

So what happens next?

Over the next six-plus weeks, the nominees will be celebrating and campaigning.

On Thursday, they will assemble at a Midtown hotel to meet the press — a traditional post-nominations ritual at which they pose for photos, sit for interviews and get their official I’m-a-Tony-nominee pins.

Then come a string of other ceremonies (among them, the Drama League , Drama Critics’ Circle , Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle awards ), nonprofit galas (where nominees can mingle with, or perform in front of, Tony voters), and an annual luncheon at the Rainbow Room.

The Tony Awards ceremony this year is scheduled to take place on June 16 at Lincoln Center’s David H. Koch Theater (home to the New York City Ballet). The televised portion of the ceremony is to air on CBS from 8 to 11 p.m. Eastern, and to stream on Paramount+; there will be a preshow at which some awards are handed out that will stream on Pluto TV.

Ariana DeBose will host, for a third year in a row. She’s an Oscar winner for “West Side Story,” and has performed in six Broadway musicals; she was a 2018 Tony nominee for “Summer.”

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What’s up next on Broadway? Plenty.

Broadway is pretty packed right now — there are 35 shows currently running, so there’s not a lot of room for more until some of those close (as a few of them, inevitably, will do following Tony nomination or award disappointments).

But there are a handful of new shows, and a concert stand, expected to open on Broadway between now and Labor Day.

First up: A revival of “Home,” a three-character play by Samm-Art Williams, is scheduled to begin previews May 17 and to open June 5 at the recently renamed Todd Haimes Theater. This production is to feature Tory Kittles, Brittany Inge and Stori Ayers; it is being directed by Kenny Leon and produced by the nonprofit Roundabout Theater Company.

“Home,” initially staged by the Negro Ensemble Company, first arrived on Broadway in 1980; it is a coming-of-age story about a young man from North Carolina.

Next: Ben Platt, who won a Tony Award for originating the title role in “Dear Evan Hansen,” will be playing an 18-performance concert residency to reopen the Palace Theater, which has been closed for six years for a construction project. Platt’s show is scheduled to run from May 28 to June 15.

“Oh, Mary!,” a madcap comedy from the alt-cabaret performer Cole Escola, is scheduled to begin performances June 26 and to open July 11 at the Lyceum Theater. The show, a historical fantasia about the former first lady Mary Todd Lincoln, has been playing to sold-out houses at Off Broadway’s Lucille Lortel Theater since January.

A very different style comedy, “Forbidden Broadway on Broadway: Merrily We Stole a Song,” had announced plans for a summer run, but decided to indefinitely postpone its run , citing Broadway's crowded landscape.

Still, there are likely to be at least one or two other new shows on Broadway this summer. There has been talk of a possible transfer of a City Center production of “Once Upon a Mattress,” starring Sutton Foster. And a play called “The Roommate,” starring Mia Farrow and Patti LuPone, is expected to start performances this summer in anticipation of a post-Labor Day opening.

Alicia Keys on ‘Hell’s Kitchen’ nods: I’m in ‘a deep state of freaking out.’

Alicia Keys has been working on “Hell’s Kitchen” for 13 years, so she found it serendipitous — in addition to thrilling — that on Tuesday morning her musical picked up 13 Tony nominations.

In an interview shortly after the nominations were announced, Keys was clearly heartened by the news. The show, featuring her songs and a book by Kristoffer Diaz, is personal for Keys . The show is about a 17-year-old girl whose life circumstances have enormous echoes of Keys’s own upbringing — the single mother, the hunger for independence, the passion for piano, even the same subsidized housing development.

These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Congratulations! What do you make of this?

Whoa! I’m definitely in a deep state of freaking out in a really great, awesome, grateful way. I don’t know what’s happening to me — I’m a songwriter and I can’t put my words together, but I feel unbelievable. I’m so excited for everybody to be recognized.

Did you ever have any doubts, or were you always confident about this one?

I’ve always felt really good about it, and I know that we’ve put the work and the time into it, and so I do feel a sense of strength and joy around it, but you just never know how people receive things. You never know how it all goes. And ultimately you can’t create with that in mind — you have to create with your mission in mind.

Do you really burn palo santo around the theater?

Absolutely! Every crevice, every backstage place, every dressing room, on the stage itself, in the theater, in the seats. Just creating that good energy.

Is it hard to watch people perform scenes that echo painful chapters in your own life?

It is painful and it is thrilling and it is emotional and it is honest. When Kecia Lewis sings “Perfect Way to Die” at the end of the first act, I don’t care how many times I see that, it touches me powerfully and poignantly every time. It is painful, but it’s also triumphant, you know?

What is it like for you to see your songs in a totally different context?

That is the part that I find to be the most curious and the most fascinating is how songs can continue to evolve even to its composer. There is something so special about that. When people leave the theater, they say, “I never heard those songs like that before.” And neither have I! There’s something really tremendous about just how it’s taken on a life of its own.

I know you want this show to run as long as possible. What are the tasks ahead for you?

Yes, that is the goal. I do have many dreams and many manifestations to be on the level of longevity of some of the greatest pieces of theater that have ever existed. That would be such a deep honor. And so we’re just going to keep working and keep loving, keep believing. And you know, the rest is up to whatever divine choice is meant for this.

So many shows only just opened. How did the nominations happen so quickly?

Of the 36 Tony-eligible shows on Broadway this season, 12 only just opened — during a frenetic nine-day period that wrapped up on April 25.

So how is it possible that the season’s Tony nominations are already being announced?

Broadway’s openings are always clustered around the Tony eligibility deadline — which this year was April 25 — because producers believe that Tony nominators and voters will remember most clearly, and hopefully fondly, the shows they saw most recently. (A similar phenomenon occurs in Hollywood, where many films open close to the deadline to qualify for the Oscars.)

The Tony nominators are required to see every show before they vote, and this year they voted on April 29. That meant they had to see a lot of shows in a short period of time — many of them set aside much of the second half of April for theatergoing. But with careful planning it can be done — in fact, it happens every year — because the nominators, like theater critics, are invited to see shows in preview performances starting a few days before the official opening, and can come to any performance after that, free of charge. Generally they have at least eight opportunities to see a show before they vote.

And who are the nominators? They are artists and arts administrators who are knowledgeable about theater but do not have a financial relationship to any Tony-eligible show. This year’s committee started with 60 members, but, as happens each year, several had to recuse themselves because they missed a show or developed a conflict of interest, so in the end 44 members of the committee wound up voting on this year’s nominations.

Laura Collins-Hughes

Jessica Lange, nominated for ‘Mother Play,’ wanted to create a new role.

Jessica Lange’s previous Broadway outings have all been in classics: Tennessee Williams’s “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “The Glass Menagerie,” and Eugene O’Neill’s “Long Day’s Journey Into Night,” for which she won a Tony Award in 2016.

This time, though, Lange is creating a role: Phyllis Herman, the title character in Paula Vogel’s Tony-nominated “Mother Play,” whose entire cast — which also includes Celia Keenan-Bolger and Jim Parsons — received Tony nods.

On Tuesday morning, Lange, 75, spoke by phone about her nomination. These are edited excerpts from that conversation.

Congratulations. How are you feeling?

What made me the very happiest of all news this morning was that the three of us were all nominated. Each part is integral to the whole, and to separate out would have been inconceivable.

Why did you say yes to playing Phyllis?

It came down to wanting to do a new play, which I’ve never done before. I’ve done the great kind of classics from the American canon. I didn’t quite know the process of working on a new play. I wanted to understand having a living playwright in the room with you, working and changing things and adapting. It’s a brand-new play. No one has ever seen it before. The character has not been played by a dozen other actresses in history.

When I look at your Broadway roles — Blanche DuBois, Amanda Wingfield, Mary Tyrone and now Phyllis — I see them belonging to a kind of lineage.

You could definitely draw a line from one to another. They have this profound disappointment and profound loneliness. Those are the things that, in the roles that I’ve been drawn to onstage, have really appealed to me. Like Mary Tyrone, which is the favorite role I’ve ever played, and would continue playing for the rest of my life if I could. [Laughs.] You can kind of trace that lineage through all four characters of some great, profound disappointment, and also some profound misjudgment. You know, that moment where you do something that you then regret for the rest of your life, and that follows you and haunts you.

You are playing a character based on a real person who was your playwright ’ s mother. Did that affect your approach?

Actually it didn’t, because I was not interested in doing some kind of historical representation, and I don’t think that was what Paula had in mind.

You have a stunner of a solo scene that ’ s long and quiet and almost wordless: Phyllis at home, engaged in the mundane tasks of a lonely life.

And counting the time until she can have her first drink. She has obviously set some kind of schedule that she won’t have her first drink before 7 o’clock or whatever it is. So it’s filling up that time. But even with the first drink, it’s not a balm. That is one of the most interesting scenes, I find. You read about this, that loneliness is epidemic in this country. I think it’s much more universal than we’re aware of. So to investigate that I found really fascinating: a woman coming home from work, she’s estranged from her children, her family is gone. What do you do to fill the hours before you can go to sleep and start yet another day?

You have a Tony for “Long Day ’ s Journey.” You have two Oscars. You have three Emmys. Do awards matter?

I’m not going to pretend that it’s meaningless, because it’s not. The people in your community, your peers or whatever, look at your work and say, “Yes, that was good work.” I mean, I’ve had enough that they haven’t acknowledged. [Laughs.] So when it’s acknowledged, I’m thrilled.

Julia Jacobs

Leslie Odom Jr. on his Tony nomination for ‘Purlie Victorious.’

To land the role of Aaron Burr in a new musical by Lin-Manuel Miranda called “Hamilton,” Leslie Odom Jr. had to go on a campaign of persuasion , imploring the show’s director over and over to cast him as the protagonist’s foil.

After the whirlwind of success that was “Hamilton,” Odom was the one making the choices for what was next.

For his return to Broadway, he decided on a revival of Ossie Davis’s 1961 play “Purlie Victorious,” an uproarious comedy about a Black preacher from Georgia. The original iteration of the play, about all that America has stolen from its Black citizens, had counted the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. among its audience members . It had not been staged on Broadway since the Civil Rights Movement.

On Tuesday, Odom, 42 — who won a Tony in 2016 for his performance as Burr — received his second Tony nomination for his role as Purlie. He shared his delight over the phone from Philadelphia, where he learned the news in a hotel lobby as he struggled to find the livestream of the announcement on his phone. Here are edited excerpts from the conversation.

I’m sure after “Hamilton” you had plenty of choices for what to do next. Why “Purlie”?

Simply, I was looking for something harder than the challenge Lin had given us. Lin had given us the biggest challenge onstage that any of us had ever had before and after you climb a mountain like that there was a desire to keep climbing.

We’ve been dreaming about “Purlie” on Broadway and trying to get it on Broadway for years, so the fact that we made it, the fact that it did so well and connected with people in the way that it did, and then to have a morning like this, it’s just a feeling that I can’t quite describe. Certainly it’s harder to describe before I’ve had my coffee.

How was the challenge of “Purlie” different than the challenge of playing Burr, which included singing and dancing on top of the acting?

The amount of text — I had never taken on a challenge like that. The physical and emotional demands of it. There was also taking on the challenge of joining the producing team. Wearing both those hats — starring in the play and producing it — was something I had never done before. And this was a play that hadn’t been done in 62 years. There are some shows that we, for whatever reason, get real used to seeing every five or six years. “Purlie Victorious” has not been one of those shows, and so it was, in some ways, a new play for lots of people. It had a fair amount of challenges to it, and certainly more than I had when Lin-Manuel gave me the role of a lifetime and asked me to stand onstage eight shows a week and sing that music.

Are you looking for any particular challenges at this stage in your career? What’s something you haven’t done that you want to try?

There is. I don’t know if there’s anything I want to tell The [New York] Times about. You know, it was one of these kind of interviews after I won a Tony in 2016 — somebody said, “Is there any show that you want to revive?” and I said “Purlie.” So I’ve got to be careful what I wish for, is what I have learned.

Alexis Soloski

Jeremy Strong on his nomination and a role in ‘Enemy’ that felt ‘undeniable.’

Jeremy Strong’s best actor nomination for his starring role in the widely praised “An Enemy of the People” could not have come as a surprise. But it did. “It’s always a surprise, actually,” he said. “And the Tonys have always represented the highest accolade to me, the Holy Grail. So it’s incredibly gratifying.”

Strong, a star of the HBO phenomenon “Succession,” spent his early career in the theater. After a break of more than a decade, he returned in Amy Herzog’s adaptation of the Ibsen drama, directed by Sam Gold. Strong plays Dr. Thomas Stockmann, a man who discovers that his town’s beloved spa is dangerously polluted and a vector of infection. When Stockmann speaks his truth, the townspeople turn on him.

Having spent so many years away from the stage, Strong did not know if he would have the strength to carry the play. But he couldn’t deny the role and the environmental themes it explored. “It felt necessary,” he said. “The play felt like a summons.” And he feels that his time in film and television has influenced his stage acting.

“Maybe what I’ve been doing over the last 10 years has helped prepare me to try to be free up there,” he said.

Reached on the morning of the Tony nominations, Strong described playing the role as like “walking the plank,” “summiting Everest” and “walking a beautiful tightrope over an abyss.” These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Why did you choose this play for your return to theater?

It’s a play that speaks urgently to now. It’s a play about a man attempting to wake people up to an imminent ecological catastrophe and warn them of the steep and perilous cost of their inaction. And Amy Herzog and Sam Gold are people who I love deeply and have absolute faith in. So it just felt undeniable.

Dr. Stockmann is someone who speaks truth to power and then suffers the consequences. How close do you feel to the character?

The truth that Stockmann is fighting for is a much larger and more important truth than whatever my personal truth as an actor is. But I have to summon all the courage I have just to walk out there every day. Most of what’s in this character, it’s something that I’ve had to find through the play. There’s any number of things that fill me up and fire my imagination and my heart and passion, the climate crisis being first and foremost, and all of these incredibly brave, courageous scientists and activists who are putting themselves on the line to wake up our civilization.

During one of the press nights, the production was interrupted by climate change protesters . How did it feel to have the real intrude on the play?

It was difficult. But those people echoed and amplified the message of the play. While there was a slight wobble for me, ultimately it was quite easy to embrace what they were saying and to exhort them to continue. I was like, [expletive] it, they’re right. And I would be a hypocrite to try and silence people advocating for scientific truth. In retrospect, it was a gift, because it underlined what the play is about.

Daniel Radcliffe on breaking the spell with his first Tony nomination.

Daniel Radcliffe caught the first batch of Tony nominations during the announcement at 8:30 a.m. He texted congratulations to his “ Merrily We Roll Along ” co-star Jonathan Groff, who was nominated for best actor in a musical.

But then dad duty called before his own category, featured actor in a musical, was announced at 9:00.

“I was in the middle of doing breakfast and trying to put my son down for his morning nap, so I got a text from a member of the cast letting me know I was nominated,” said the actor, 34, who stars as the lyricist and playwright Charley Kringas in the acclaimed revival of the 1981 Stephen Sondheim-George Furth musical, “Merrily We Roll Along.”

Radcliffe’s Tony nomination — for his fifth Broadway role since his 2008 debut in “Equus” — is the first of his career. And it’s extra special, he said in a phone conversation from his New York apartment on Tuesday, because not only Groff, but his other “Merrily” co-star, Lindsay Mendez, was also nominated, for featured actress.

“People in your line of work probably get bored of actors talking about how much they love each other, how much they enjoy working with each other,” said Radcliffe, who is best known for playing Harry Potter onscreen. “And we do say it a lot, but this group is really awesome — Lindsay, Jonathan, the whole cast. I feel so lucky.”

You recently were the ring bearer at Lindsay’s wedding , for which Jonathan served as the officiant. How did that come about?

It’s what I do in the show — when Jonathan and Katie Rose Clarke are getting married, I’m the ring bearer. So we were in Lindsay’s dressing room on the Saturday or Sunday before she got married, and she just offhandedly was like, “Would you be the ring bearer?” We found that funny. So I did! But also I suddenly went from going to a wedding with zero responsibilities to going and having to not screw something up; to not drop the rings and suddenly have them flying around Central Park! But it was fine.

All three of you have been with the show since its Off Broadway run in 2022. How has your performance grown and changed?

When we first met, we were getting on really well, but we were still getting to know each other, so we were having to act the friendship more. And now so much of it is just there. That’s not a feeling you get all the time as an actor. It’s rare, and I feel very lucky that I just have to look into Jonathan’s eyes or Lindsay’s eyes and get everything I need to get through whatever moment we’re doing.

What initially attracted you to the “Merrily” role?

When I saw this production in London, I had the reaction of going, “Oh, I’m really right for this part.” I could hear my voice in the character pretty early on. I love musical theater, but it’s not something I’ve done my whole life the way Jonathan and Lindsay have, so the vocal aspects and the musical aspects are the stuff I’ve really enjoyed, especially when the music is as incredible as Sondheim’s. “ Franklin Shepard ” in particular was pretty challenging to learn initially. But now that it’s in me, it’s incredibly fun.

There’s no challenge in musical theater like a Sondheim patter song.

The first few times I was doing it, it was genuinely terrifying. The one time Off Broadway where it kind of went wrong was one of the most terrifying things that’s ever happened to me onstage.

What happened?

I got ahead of the band by like half a beat, so I was out of sync with them for — it felt like 30 seconds, but it was probably less. Thankfully there are enough musical things happening in that song that I recognized one of them and was able to reorient myself.

Who is the person you’ve been most nervous to have come see the show?

Meryl Streep was in the audience one night, and I was very thrilled to find that out after the show was finished.

“Merrily” closes July 7. What’s next for you?

I’m going to take some time off and just be a dad for a while, which I’m very, very excited about.

Jesse Green ,  Alexis Soloski and Scott Heller

Tony nominations snubs and surprises: Steve Carell and ‘The Wiz’ miss out

The day of the Tony Award nominations is like college acceptance day a bit earlier in the spring, but on the scarcity model: Of the dozens of artists eligible in each category, only five or so are “admitted.” That means some great work gets left by the wayside — but also, because the number of nominators is small enough to be idiosyncratic, that plenty of outcomes defy all prediction. Here are our thoughts on this season’s inadvertent (and possibly advertent) snubs, delightful (or mystifying) surprises and other notable anomalies.

A melancholy morning for ‘Vanya.’

Television stars are considered good box office but not always good Tony bait. This year’s crop, including Sarah Paulson, Jeremy Strong, Steve Carell and William Jackson Harper, complicates that wisdom. Paulson is a likely winner but the men are already canceling each other out. Though Carell, in his Broadway debut, and Harper both play characters competing for the love of a married woman in the Lincoln Center Theater revival of “Uncle Vanya,” only Harper, excellent in a role that is usually considered supporting, was nominated as best leading actor in a play. (The production, which featured many lovely performances, was otherwise shut out.) Note that Chekhov let neither man win.

Deep cuts for ‘Stereophonic.’

How the nominators handled the ensemble in David Adjmi’s recording-studio-set play was going to be one of the morning’s most interesting questions. The answer: Generously, as five members of the young cast were singled out for their supporting performances, including Tom Pecinka and Sarah Pidgeon as the fraying central couple, and Juliana Canfield and Will Brill as their bandmates. Without an instrument in hand, Eli Gelb got in, too, as the ’70s rock group’s frazzled sound engineer. Spreading all that love helped take the show to Number One with a Bullet — the most nominated play in Broadway history.

Too many riches to go around.

On the other hand, the superb ensemble casts of “Jaja’s African Hair Braiding” and “Illinoise” were skunked. That’s no accident: As more works these days distribute the storytelling burden equally among many members of a cast, odd nomination outcomes — feast or famine — can result.

That’s why we often argue here for a new category that honors ensembles. And Actors’ Equity, the national union representing actors and stage managers, goes further, with its annual award for Broadway choruses. Of the 23 musicals that opened this season, 21 are eligible; the winner will be notified on June 15 — pointedly, one day before the Tonys.

Women lead in directing.

In the history of the awards, only 10 women, beginning in 1998, have won prizes for directing. This year that number seems likely to rise, with seven of the 10 possible directing slots filled by women. Anne Kauffman, Lila Neugebauer and Whitney White have been nominated for best direction of a play, and Maria Friedman, Leigh Silverman, Jessica Stone and Danya Taymor (the niece of Julie Taymor, the first woman to win for direction of a musical) are in contention for best direction of a musical.

To love, honor and ignore.

The Tony nominating committee said “I do” to two pairs of actors playing married characters: Brian d’Arcy James and Kelli O’Hara as lovers undone by alcoholism in “Days of Wine and Roses,” and Maryann Plunkett and Dorian Harewood as an older couple grappling with dementia in “The Notebook.” But the shows did not receive the same love. Neither was nominated for best musical, though “Days of Wine and Roses” did pick up a nomination for score and “The Notebook” for book. Guess you can’t always have your wedding cake, and eat it too.

A warm Willkommen to ‘Cabaret.’

Rebecca Frecknall’s crepuscular revival of Kander and Ebb’s “Cabaret” was celebrated when it opened on the West End in 2021, eventually winning seven Olivier awards. But its Broadway transfer received a more muted response. (“Too often a misguided attempt to resuscitate the show breaks its ribs ,” The New York Times wrote.) So who cares? Not the Tony nominators, who recognized the show with a nomination for best revival of a musical and gave nods to the actors — Eddie Redmayne, Gayle Rankin, Bebe Neuwirth and Steven Skybell — in all four categories.

No yellow brick road for ‘The Wiz.’

The much-anticipated revival has been one of spring’s early hits, but Tony nominators followed the lead of critics, not audiences, who didn’t have much nice to say about the show’s look, script and performances. “The Wiz,” which earned seven Tony awards when it arrived on Broadway in 1975, didn’t get a single nod this time around.

Shaina Taub gets out the vote (mostly).

Like “Hamilton,” the musical “Suffs” looks at American history through a contemporary lens. Like “Hamilton,” the show started at the Public Theater before moving to Broadway. And like “Hamilton,” it was written and composed by its multitalented star, here 35-year-old Shaina Taub . When nominations were announced, though, Taub didn’t pull off a Lin-Manuel Trifecta. She received nods for her music and book, two of six nominations for “Suffs,” but not for starring as the suffragist Alice Paul. Nikki M. James, already a Tony winner for “The Book of Mormon,” got the show’s one acting nomination, as Ida B. Wells .

Pop/rock storms another stage…

Squint and you may think you’re at the Grammy Awards on Tonys night, as the best score nominees include Arcade Fire’s Will Butler (“Stereophonic”); David Byrne and Fatboy Slim (“Here Lies Love”); and Jamestown Revival (“The Outsiders”). Plus, of course, Sufjan Stevens, whose 2005 concept album is transcendently reorchestrated for dance in the best musical nominee “Illinoise,” and Alicia Keys, whose existing tunes power the most nominated musical of all, “Hell’s Kitchen.”

Except when it doesn’t.

Among those who might instead be watching from home: the not-nominated Barry Manilow (“Harmony”); Ingrid Michaelson (“The Notebook”); and Huey Lewis, whose songbook energizes “The Heart of Rock and Roll,” but didn’t rouse Tony nominators.

Waving the flag for ‘Illinoise’ and more.

Monday’s roster reflected a Broadway season that was notably American, even aside from “Illinoise,” a show actually named for a state. “Hell’s Kitchen,” nodding at the New York City neighborhood where Keys grew up, told a story we like to think of as local: Big dreams come true. “Suffs” took us behind the scenes of American history, as women fought for the vote. “Purlie Victorious” and “Appropriate” took contrasting approaches — one comic, one gothic — to the peculiar American institution of racism. But even aside from their content, the 17 productions nominated for the biggest prizes are overwhelmingly the work of American authors. (One of the touted London imports, Peter Morgan’s “Patriots,” didn’t even make the list for best play.) Is Broadway, which has too often resembled a British colony, finally achieving independence?

Sarah Paulson on her first Tony nomination, for ‘Appropriate.’

After Sarah Paulson moved to New York City when she was a young girl, her mother took a job as a waitress at Sardi’s, a storied Broadway restaurant. It opened up a world that she would not have otherwise been exposed to, helping to nurture her ambitions of performing onstage.

Paulson’s first acting job, at 19, was as a Broadway understudy, beginning a career that returned to the stage several more times but found its rhythm on television, with steady roles on Ryan Murphy’s “American Horror Story” and a career-defining turn as the prosecutor Marcia Clark in the limited series “ The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story ,” for which she won an Emmy.

Despite complex roles as famous public figures and, once, a pair of conjoined twins , Paulson said her most challenging role has been in the Broadway drama “Appropriate,” for which she received a Tony nomination for best leading actress in a play on Tuesday.

In “ Appropriate ,” a play by Branden Jacobs-Jenkins , Paulson plays an older sister clinging to her memories of her father as she and her siblings clear out his home after his death, confronting the family’s dark secrets and their grievances against one another in the process. In the script, Paulson gets to play with cutting insults, weighty monologues and plenty of yelling.

After learning of the news while still in bed, hours before taking the stage again, Paulson spoke about the endurance that it takes to be a stage actor and about her career coming full circle. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.

Tell me how you’re feeling right now about your first Tony nomination.

I feel very moved and certainly overwhelmed to be in a category with such extraordinary women, some of whom are my friends. More than anything there’s that little girl in me who moved to New York at 5 years old and whose mother got a job as a waitress at this theater hangout, to wake up and have a Tony nomination for the first time in my life, at 49, feels just wildly moving to me and something that I have dreamed about since I was a girl.

I think a lot of times we spent a lot of energy pretending like these things don’t matter, because at the end of the day, they don’t — in the grand scheme of things the work is all that matters — but the little girl in me cannot be quieted this morning with a kind of explosive joy and excitement for a childhood dream being realized.

What makes your role in “Appropriate” — as Toni Lafayette, this very headstrong, sometimes caustic woman — the toughest you have faced so far?

Part of it is the athleticism required to do a play eight times a week — vocally, spiritually, emotionally. It is literally different every night. Energetically, you can only prepare a certain amount and then something else happens onstage between you and the audience and you can’t prepare yourself for that. There are aspects of every performance that are unknown to you.

I remember one of the notes I got — I actually have it pinned up on my wall in my dressing room now — is that Toni belongs to you now. Ride the roller coaster with her; when she’s her most cruel, do it. When she’s her most loving, do it. When she’s her most vulnerable, allow that to happen. Toni is a roller coaster. She’s a roller coaster of a person, and therefore I have to be on that rickety roller coaster with her every night.

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