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Cain

byJosé Saramago, Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

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After killing his brother Abel, Cain must wander for ever. He witnesses Noah's ark, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf. He is there in time to save Abraham from sacrificing Isaac when God's angel arrives late after a wing malfunction.

Written in the last years of Saramago's life, Cain wittily tackles many of the moral and logical non sequiturs created by a wilful, authoritarian God, forming part of Saramago's long argument with God and recalling his provocative novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ.

There are some very funny moments in this reimagining of the story of Adam and Eve's fratricidal son... Hats must be doffed once again to Margaret Jull Costa, Saramago's fearless long-time translator, for taming his punctuation-free prose, rendering it not only readable, but enjoyable, and for bringing the late Portuguese author's often challenging work to a worldwide readership

Financial Times

About José Saramago

José Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922, he was in his sixties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. Saramago died in June 2010.
Details
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • ISBN: 9781784871802
  • Length: 176 pages
  • Dimensions: 197mm x 11mm x 128mm
  • Weight: 132g
  • Price: £9.99
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