The Stone Raft by José Saramago

As people return to their homes and life gradually returns, as one is wont to say, to normal, the arguments rage on among the scientists about possible causes for the peninsula's deviation at the very last minute, just when it appeared that nothing could avert the catastrophe. The theories vary, nearly all of them irreconcilable, thus contributing mathematically to the irreducibility of experts locked in controversy.

A first theory considers the peninsula's new course to be entirely random, forming as it does a perfect right angle with the previous one, and thus rules out any explanation that might assume, shall we say, an act of volition. Besides, to whom could such an act be attributed, since no one is likely to suggest that the incessant swarming, on an enormous mass of stone and earth, of tens of millions of people could somehow be added or multiplied to engender an intelligence or power capable of acting with a precision one can only describe as diabolical.