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Cain

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"Saramago juxtaposes an eminently readable narrative of work and poverty, class and desire, knowledge and timelessness -- one in which God, too, as he faces Cain in the wake of Noah's Ark, emerges as far more human than expected." -- San Francisco Chronicle In this, his last novel, José Saramago da...

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Main Author: Saramago, José
Other Authors: Costa, Margaret Jull
Format: Downloads eBook Books eBook
Language:English
Published: 2011.
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Cain > (Biblical figure) > Fiction.
Electronic books.
Online Access:Go to Downloadable eBook Here.
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Summary:"Saramago juxtaposes an eminently readable narrative of work and poverty, class and desire, knowledge and timelessness -- one in which God, too, as he faces Cain in the wake of Noah's Ark, emerges as far more human than expected." -- San Francisco Chronicle In this, his last novel, José Saramago daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocative The Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah's Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Cain, the despised, the murderer, is Saramago's protagonist. Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, the trials of Job. The rapacious Queen Lilith takes him as her lover. An old man with two sheep on a rope crosses his path. And again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. "And one thing we know for certain," Saramago writes, "is that they continued to argue and are arguing still." A startling book -- sensual, funny -- and in all ways a fitting end to Saramago's extraordinary career. "A winkingly blasphemous retelling of the Old Testament . . . Saramago, playfully stretching his chatty late style, pokes holes in the stated logic of the Biblical God throughout the novel." -- The New Yorker This e-book includes a sample chapter of BLINDNESS.
Physical Description:1 online resource
Format:Requires OverDrive Read (file size: N/A KB) or Adobe Digital Editions (file size: 562 KB) or Kobo app or compatible Kobo device (file size: N/A KB) or Amazon Kindle (file size: N/A KB).
ISBN:9780547519401
Author Notes:José Saramago was born on November 16, 1922. He spent most of his childhood on his parent's farm, except while attending school in Lisbon. Before devoting himself exclusively to writing novels in 1976, he worked as a draftsman, a publisher's reader, an editor, translator, and political commentator for Diario de Lisboa.

He is indisputably Portugal's best-known literary figure and his books have been translated into more than 25 languages. Although he wrote his first novel in 1947, he waited some 35 years before winning critical acclaim for work such as the Memorial do Convento. His works include The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and Blindness.

At age 75, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 for his work in which "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony, continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality." He died from a prolonged illness that caused multiple organ failure on June 18, 2010 at the age of 87.

(Bowker Author Biography)

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