The Elephant's Wandering is the penultimate book by José Saramago, the great Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize laureate in literature, who passed away in 2010. In this novel, King John III the Pious of Portugal gives Archduke Maximilian, the future Holy Roman Emperor, an unusual wedding gift - an elephant named Solomon. And so, with his driver Subhro, the elephant sets off on a journey throughout Europe, torn apart by religious wars, undergoing many adventures along the way. His path lies through Valladolid and Genoa, Verona and Venice, through impassable Alpine passes, along the picturesque Inn River - and finally to the imperial capital of Vienna, the heart of the Habsburg power.