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Cain

José Saramago,

Margaret Jull Costa (Translator)

Why we're reading this: Portuguese author
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Jun 01, 2015 Ryan rated it liked it

Shelves: favorite-authors, fiction, 2015

"Doubt is the privilege of those who have lived a long time"

Either I'm getting better at reading Saramago with his disdain for punctuation and paragraph breaks, or this book is super-short. Probably a little of both. Books like this that play around with biblical lore always draw me in, since so many of those stories were drilled into my head in my Catholic youth. This idea - to follow Cain after he is condemned to wander the world - is a clever one. We've all had moments of comparing our own fa ...more

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Aug 06, 2013 Tanya rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: list-1001-btrbyd

The style is hard to read with the lack of capitalization for proper nouns and overuse of commas. Kept me interested thinking of assumptions or "truths" from the Bible. A parody. Warning: explicit sexuality ...more

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Nov 17, 2023 Katie rated it liked it

Shelves: male-author

This book is a reimagining of some Old Testament stories. After Cain kills Abel, he wanders around, as God condemns him to do, and in doing so, encounters other Old Testament characters. Cain continually stands up to God and his angels, pointing out the ridiculousness/cruelty of many of their actions. I loved the premise of this book and there were a lot of really funny moments in the interactions between God and Cain, but Saramago's style with the lack of paragraphs and punctuation made it real ...more

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