2010 books
5) José Saramago, The Tale of the Unknown Island, 1997 ( RE-READ )
This is a clever Swiftian fable noted for its brevity and elegance, about a man who demands a boat from a king to go off in search of a unknown island. Saramago's famously dense style of written dialogue doesn't impede the journey he takes you on, which is inner rather than outer, and given that it's Saramago doing the telling there are inevitably some cleverly nuanced digs at authority layered within the prose, even though this is emphatically a tale about self-discovery. A far better than average feel-good book that has also made a welcome wedding gift, more than once.