The Cave

2022: AÑO SARAMAGO
An impressive parable about the current world and the true meaning of change.

"What a strange scene you describe, and what strange prisoners. They are just like us."
Plato, Republic, Book VII

A small pottery, a gigantic shopping mall. A world in a rapid process of extinction, another that grows and multiplies like a game of mirrors where there seem to be no limits to deceptive illusion. The Cave speaks of a way of life that is increasingly less our own. Every day animal and plant species become extinct, every day professions become useless, languages cease to have people who speak them, traditions lose their meaning, feelings turn into their opposites.

A family of potters understands that they are no longer necessary to the world. Like a snake shedding its skin to grow into another that will later also become small, the shopping mall seems to tell the pottery: "Die, I no longer need you."

As is usual in his body of work, in this novel Saramago expresses his vision of today's world and human society as we experience it. And he reminds us that we will not change our lives if we do not change life itself.

Critics have said:
"In this novel, Saramago shows us how to free ourselves."
The New York Times

"Saramago makes an elusive reality comprehensible, with parables sustained by imagination, compassion, and irony."
Nobel Committee

"A man with a sensitivity and a capacity to see and understand that are far beyond what common mortals generally see and understand."
Héctor Abad Faciolince

"Saramago is an example, a most dignified style of life and literature, which demonstrates the possibility of navigating against the current [...]. His words have the value of an antifreeze, a personal remedy against the gales of cynicism that surround us."
Luis García Montero

"I don't know, nor do I want to know, where Saramago got that diabolical narrative tone, harsh and compassionate at the same time, [...] which allows him to tell so close to the heart and at the same time so close to history."
Luis Landero

"Saramago writes novels about myths to demystify them, [...] always to address the reality around him, to deal with current problems that belong to everyone, and so that everything is clear from the beginning."
Rafael Conte, Babelia

"Like Günter Grass or Cees Nooteboom, Saramago aspires to connect with a public that transcends national limits."
El País