Cain

I’m a big Saramago fan, but this book disappointed me. The tone is flippant and silly; the story isn’t particularly deep. If you like the idea of a free retelling of the life of a Biblical character, I recommend instead Saramago’s “The Gospel According to Jesus Christ”, which is thought provoking, serious, and in its own way reverent. More generally, skip this book and give one of Saramago’s more famous works a try.To be fair, “Cain” isn’t entirely vacuous. It’s ultimately about bitterness (the principal targets are injustice, violence, and organized religion), and the surprise ending captures that bitterness well. But in my view this novel is a swing-and-a-miss. Even a Nobel laureate comes up short now and then.

Through the eyes of a time traveling Cain, this book provides an alternative perspective to the biblical events of the pre-flood era. It also provides the author's highly critcal view of God.After expulsion from the Garden of Eden, Cain kills Abel, is cursed by God and becomes a wanderer. His wanderings take him east to the Demon Queen Lilith and then on a rather random tour of the Old Testament incuding Abraham's attempt to sacrifice Isaac, the Tower of Babel, Joshua's battle of Jericho, the destruction of Sodom and Gomarra, the golden calf and a host of other events. Cain's experiences are frequently a bit different than as related by the Bible and by most Judeo-Christian authorities. Without spoiling the story, suffice it to say that Cain's final adventure is very different from the Biblical version.Saramago's Cain is not a big fan of the Lord. In Cain's/Saramago's eyes God is irrational, vengeful, bloodthirsty, petty and a host of other unfavorable adjectives.I enjoyed this book, even though Sarmago's writing syle was quite unconventional. Early on, it was difficult to follow, but I quickly found myself actually enjoying it.Finally, if your religious beliefs are devout, you will almost certainly find this book outrageous and blasphemous. If you are a cynic, or just open minded, you will probably find it at least interesting if not actualy enjoyable.

A short novel dealing with a big subject, that being the relationship between man and God -- or more accurately western man and the Judeo-Christian God. The title identifies the protagonist: Cain, who murdered his brother Abel, and was cursed by God to be a "fugitive and wanderer". The novel traces his wanderings, through the landscape (temporal as well as physical) of the Torah. Cain is present at the destruction of the Tower of Babel, at the worshipping of the Golden Calf, at the obliteration of Sodom and Gomorrah, etc. etc. etc. On the occasions, Cain condemns God's behavior, in making the innocent suffer along with the guilty. God does not come off particularly well in these exchanges, while Cain seems a sort of Prometheus, an advocate of humane behavior on the part of the divine. All in all, this is an interesting take on a very old question, as well as a story that holds the reader's interest. It sent me back to my Bible (yes, those horrors really are "by the Book"). and will probably send me back to Saramago

A challenge for a punctuation pedantA 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)

A cynical walk through Genesis with all the pitfalls of taking the Scriptures literally, especially its depictions of God. There are some very funny insights, however. Even the pious will have to giggle at some of the absurdities as the character of Cain travels through a kind of time warp to encounter Abraham, Lot, Noah and others, challenging a deity who allows evil to coexist with good. Mr. Saramago's satire shows compassion for Cain and his plight but his unnuanced anger toward God becomes exasperating. It's the old anti-theodicy issue without any new insights. Biblical scholars and serious students know very well that Genesis/Exodus depictions of God represent humanity's early stages in understanding God. These concepts evolve throughout the Bible to depict God as far more caring than the tit-for-tat, rewarding/ punishing God in the more ancient biblical passages. Cain and Saramago would have to enter into the insights of the Prophets and Wisdom portions of the Bible to gain and present a more honest conversation with God and readers.

In short a powerful book, and wonderfully concise, which I consider quite a compliment for Saramago in that some of his books that I've actually liked (ie, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ or Seeing) seem to test my patience at times, though Saramago was good at delivering in these works. But this one seems to do in sharp strokes what Gospel did in sin waves: pointed examinations of the troublesome applications of rigid religiosity. Cain. Of course, is our hero, a killer whom God cannot thoroughly punish, doomed to find himself outside Jericho or Sodom, where God's wrath seems a little more self-serving rather than just. Cain becomes the ultimate cynic, a man flawed and carrying the weight (and mark) of his own crime, but struggling with the crimes of the world around him. Saramago left off with a precise little book.

Right on the opening page we know we are in for some joyous irreverence and a good deal of invention about the Bible stories. god - spelled with a lower case g - performs some extraordinary manoeuver on adam and eve (sic) because he had forgotten to endow them with speech when he created them. And adam and eve have "made the most" of their pre-Fall nudity. We learn about the origin of adam's apple.In due course Cain says that god was as much to blame for the murder of Abel: had he not spurned Cain's sacrifice, the insufferably smug Abel would not have been killed. Besides, god could have but chose not to intervene and to prevent the murder.The Bible tells us nothing of what happened to Cain later, except that he settled in the land of Nod, married an unnamed woman who bore him a son after whose name, Enoch, he named a city that he built. This leaves Saramago free to invent other events in Cain's life.Some of his inventions are purely fantastical, such as making Lilith the Queen of Nod and the wife of Noah. But for the most part Saramago's fantasy is rooted in the Bible stories. In the Bible God tells Cain, "a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth", and Cain, zigzagging backwards and forwards in time, is present in many of the later places and stories in the Bible: during Abraham's near-sacrifice of Isaac (an episode little to god's credit); during the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel (ditto); ditto again during the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah and Lot's wife being turned into a pillar of salt for showing curiosity; during the slaughter of the calf-worshippers at the foot of Mount Sinai; during god's vengeance on the Israelite army after the fall of Jericho because one soldier had kept plunder for himself instead of consecrating it to god, then, after the miscreant had confessed, repented and been stoned to death, seeing the Israelites rewarded with the slaughter of a further twelve thousand of their enemies. Cain was there when god, simply to win a bet, allowed Satan to impose on god's faithful servant Job every possible affliction, incidentally killing his ten innocent children and his slaves in the process. Finally (though of course not chronologically so) Cain finds himself on Noah's ark - nothing to link this Noah with the Noah who had been the wife of Lilith - and he witnesses almost the whole of humanity being drowned by a god who had realized that he hadn't done a very good job with mankind and took it out on them in revenge. At which point Saramago's wildest fantasy takes over again.It is clear that what began as a witty jeux d'esprit turns into a still at times witty but profound and angry indictment of the god of the Old Testament, who is guilty of infinitely more violence and bloodshed than Cain, who repented of the one person he had slain. god is shown as jealous, envious, filled with vainglorious pride, despotically whimiscal, utterly unjust and totally arbitrary.As for Samarago, he shows his own usual arbitrariness where punctuation and capitalization are concerned, and this is particularly irritating in dialogue, when the punctuation does not show who is speaking. Ask not the reason why.

If you are up to some witty twists on the stories of the Old Testament, this is for you. If you are offended by the idea of altering anything in those stories, forget it. Definitely recommended literature!

On every page is a dark and desparate plea for more understanding humanity and less superstitious judgement. Saramago renders his final attempt at defending humanism with his unique narrative style in a book that sticks with me deep in my mind.

Excellent work by the guru himself. Well done sir!

amazing book