02 December 2011

Cain ~ Jose Saramago

 ** RECOMMEND **

Delicious tongue-in-cheek
A challenge for a punctuation pedant


A subversive retelling of Old Testament as Cain wanders the world on a time-space continuum. He is marked by God and through him we meet up with the players in the stories of Babel, Sodam & Gomorrah, Lot, Noah, Joshua & Jericho. And we constantly find an difficult and vengeful God.

The writing style is as (more?) confrontational than the material. This guy doesn't seem to believe in punctuation ... sentences go on for pages and pages, dialogue is written with no indication of the speaker, capital letters are few and far between.

But it is all a breath of fresh air ... or maybe more like a bucket of cold water thrown over you! This book is quirky and funny and refreshing.

Saramago is a Noble Laureate and I must make sure to find some more (Blindness has great reviews)