The Cave - Softcover

Jose Saramago

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0099449153 ISBN 13: 9780099449157

Publisher: Random House, 2003

Synopsis

Cipriano Algor, an aging potter, lives with his daughter and her husband in the shadow of the Centre, a nebulous, constantly expanding conglomerate that provides his livelihood - until it decrees that it is no longer interested in his humble wares. Together with his daughter, they craft a new line of small ceramic figurines and, to their bafflement, the Centre orders cast quantities. But once the figures are complete, the Centre recants: there is no market for them. Resigned to idleness, Cipriano moves to a soulless megaplex, until late one night he comes across a horrifying secret in the bowels of the artificial city. "The Cave" is a harrowing, joyful masterpiece: an Orwellian nightmare, a family fable and an uplifting love story.

About this title

Review:

José Saramago is a master at pacing. Readers unfamiliar with the work of this Portuguese Nobel Prize winner would do well to begin with The Cave, a novel of ideas, shaded with suspense. Spare and pensive, The Cave follows the fortunes of an aging potter, Cipriano Algor, beginning with his weekly delivery of plates to the Center, a high-walled, windowless shopping complex, residential community, and nerve center that dominates the region. What sells at the Center will sell everywhere else, and what the Center rejects can barely be given away in the surrounding towns and villages. The news for Cipriano that morning isn't good. Half of his regular pottery shipment is rejected, and he is told that the consumers now prefer plastic tableware. Over the next week, he and his grown daughter Marta grieve for their lost craft, but they gradually open their eyes to the strange bounty of their new condition: a stray dog adopts them, and a lovely widow enters Cipriano's life. When they are invited to live at the Center, it seems ungracious to refuse, but there are strange developments under the complex and a troubling increase in security, and Cipriano changes all their fates by deciding to investigate. In Saramago's able hands, what might have become a dry social allegory is a delicately elaborated story of individualism and unexpected love. --Regina Marler

From the Back Cover:

A Los Angeles Times Best Book
A New York Times Notable Book

"[The Cave] is yet another triumph . . . for Portugal's, or even the world's, greatest living novelist. Read it."-The Washington Post Book World
Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops and apartments to which Cipriano delivers his wares. One day, he is told not to make any more deliveries. Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds. But just as suddenly, the order is cancelled and the penniless three have to move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their new apartment, Cipriano
and Marçal investigate; what they find transforms the family's life. Filled with the depth, humor, and extraordinary philosophical richness that marks each of Saramago's novels, The Cave is one of the essential books of our time.
"As with Proust, to be drawn into a Saramago sentence is to be drawn into a world that takes shape out of a maze. . . . His human voices wake us and we live."-The New York Times Book Review

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

MARGARET JULL COSTA has established herself as the premier translator of Portuguese literature into English today, and her previous renderings of Saramago's novels are highly acclaimed.

About this edition

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0099449153
• ISBN 13: 9780099449157
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352