Cipriano Algor, an elderly potter, lives with his daughter Marta and her husband Marçal in a small village on the outskirts of The Center, an imposing complex of shops, apartments, and offices to which Cipriano delivers his pots and jugs every month. On one such trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. Unwilling to give up his craft, Cipriano tries his hand at making ceramic dolls. Astonishingly, The Center places an order for hundreds, and Cipriano and Marta set to work-until the order is cancelled and the three have to move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their apartment, Cipriano and Marçal investigate, and what they find transforms the family's life. Filled with the depth, humor, and the extraordinary philosophical richness that marks each of Saramago's novels, The Cave is one of the essential books of our time.

"Saramagos long fluid sentences, richly stocked with folk wisdom, lend his novels a rare quality of permanence."

"A densely textured, wonderfully resonant reworking of Platos allegory."

"A gripping, beautifully written, utterly enchanting, archaically romantic, and, at times, devastating take on ordinary people struggling to survive."

"Well say it again: Saramago is the finest novelist, bar none."

"Saramago says he is really an essayist who took to writing novels. This is true. But the novels are masterly."

"Arguably the greatest writer of our time. He throw[s] a dazzling flash of lightning on his subjects."

"Another masterpiece from a remarkable writer who really may be, as many readers believe, the greatest living novelist."

"The teensiest bit of plot is meaningfully, accessibly stretched into something enormous."

What truly elevates-- is Saramagos style; this fantastically agile, irrepressibly funny, sympathetic, cerebral, and sometimes even corny voice."

Born in Portugal in 1922, José Saramago is one of the most acclaimed writers in the world today. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He lives in the Canary Islands.