Nadine Gordimer reads 'The Centaur' by José Saramago

It is in many ways a unique story. Here is a creature imagined, something that is higher and better and different from a man. Here is the dream of a creature that is half horse, half man, who has the physical fitness of a horse and the mental complexity of a man. This extraordinary fable shows the depths of the human confusion that the creature faces. It is a wonderful way of looking into the conflict between what one's body desires or dictates – sexual desire as part of our power; it's through sexual desire that you take possession, after all – and many of one's other ideals about how we ought to approach another being. There's as much in this little story as in 20 novels and 20 poems.