Cave（ISBN=） 英文原版

　　Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter
Marta and her husband Marcal in a small village on the outskirts of
The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices
to which Cipriano delivers his pots and jugs every month. On one
such trip, 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, and
Cipriano and Marta set to work-until the order is cancelled and the
three have to move from the village into The Center. When
mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their apartment,
Cipriano and Marcal investigate, and what they find transforms the
family’s life. Filled with the depth, humor, and the extraordinary
philosophical richness that marks each of Saramago’s novels, The
Cave is one of the essential books of our time.

　　Amazon.com 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 –This
text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this
title.
　　From Publishers Weekly
　　The struggle of the individual against bureaucracy and anonymity
is one of the great subjects of modern literature, and Saramago is
often matched with Kafka as one of its premier exponents. Apt as
the comparison is, it doesn’t convey the warmth and rueful human
dimension of novels like Blindness and All the Names. Those
qualities are particularly evident in his latest brilliant, dark
allegory, which links the encroaching sterility of modern life to
the parable of Plato’s cave. Widowed Cipriano Algor is a
64-year-old Portuguese potter who finds his business collapsing
when the demand dries up for his elegant, handcrafted wares. His
potential fate seems worse than poverty-to move with his daughter,
Marta, and his son-in-law, Mar?al Gacho, into a huge, arid complex
known as “The Center,” where Gacho works as a security guard. But
Algor gets an order from the Center for hundreds of small ceramic
figurines, a task that has Marta and Algor hustling to meet the
delivery date. Saramago’s flowing, luminous prose (beautifully
translated by Costa) serves him well in the early going as he
portrays the intricacies of Algor’s artistic life and the beginning
of his friendship with a widow he meets at the cemetery. The middle
chapters bog down as the author lingers over the process of
creating the dolls and the family’s ongoing debate over Algor’s
future. But Saramago makes up for the brief slow stretch with a
stunning ending after the doll project crashes, when Algor becomes
a resident of the Center and finds a shocking surprise in a cave
unearthed beneath it. The characters are as finely crafted as
Algor’s pottery, and Saramago deserves special kudos for his
one-dog canine chorus, a stray mutt named Found that Algor adopts
as his emotional sounding board. Saramago has an extraordinary
ability to make a complex narrative read like a simple parable.
This remarkably generous and eloquent novel is another landmark
work from an 80-year-old literary giant who remains at the height
of his powers. –Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
–This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of
this title.
　　From Library Journal
　　In another of Saramago’s haunting fables, an elderly potter has
turned to making dolls for sale at the Center, a huge complex of
shops near his village. But a chance discovery at the Center sends
him and his family fleeing in terror. –Copyright 2002 Reed
Business Information, Inc. –This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
　　”A compassionate study of loyalty, love and the ways in which
people face the foorces trying to obliterate their spirit.” —
Francine Prose, People Magazine
　　”A densely textured, wonderfully resonant reworking of Plato’s
allegory.” — Time Out New York
　　”A gripping, beautifully written, utterly enchanting, archaically
romantic, and,, at times, devastating take on ordinary people
struggling to survive.” — Book Magazine
　　”An unassuming tour de force.” — Milwaukee
Journal-Sentinel
　　”Another masterpiece from a remarkable writer who really may be,
as many readerss believe, the greatest living novelist.” — Boston
Globe
　　”Arguably the greatest writer of our time. He throw[s] a dazzling
flash of lighttning on his subjects.” — Chicago Tribune
　　”Loving collaboration that insists on the value of independence
and a firm belieef that art can’t be separated from life.” — New
York Newsday
　　”Saramago says he is really an essayist who took to writing
novels. This is truee. But the novels are masterly.” — Seattle
Times
　　”The teensiest bit of plot is meaningfully, accessibly stretched
into something enormous.” — Entertainment Weekly
　　”We’ll say it again: Saramago is the finest novelist, bar none.”
— starred review, Kirkus –This text refers to an out of print or
unavailable edition of this title.
　　”Saramago”s long fluid sentences, richly stocked with folk
wisdom, lend his novels a rare quality of permanence.”