Of course we should bear in mind that we see God’s actions through the eyes of the first murderer of humankind.

And while we follow Cain’s adventures, we get more and more proof of his impotence, and we can ascertain that this God is dumb, inconsistent, cruel, selfish, indecisive, inhuman, and prone to making one mistake after the other. It’s quite obvious from the very beginning that Saramago’s God is neither benevolent, nor fearsome, nor omnipotent. After living through a whole lot of bloody and cruel episodes, his opinion about God deteriorates rapidly, and he gives voice to his doubts during his bitter and passionate arguments with God.

And Cain doesn’t only observe these events – he often interferes, and tries to change them. And the real story unfolds during the course of Cain’s wanderings.ĭuring his ramblings, Cain sometimes unexpectedly finds himself at different, unknown places and times, and this way he witnesses several well-known Biblical events: he’s there when Abraham is getting ready to sacrifice Isaac he’s there when Jericho is destroyed and he’s also there when Satan tempts the god-fearing Job. Afterwards things happen more or less in the way known from the Bible: Adam and Eve are expelled from Paradise their children are born Cain kills Abel, after which God punishes him by marking his forehead and by condemning him to eternal wandering. To rectify the situation, he swiftly and thoughtlessly places tongues in their mouths and then leaves them to fend for themselves in the Garden of Eden. It turns out that God is not pleased with his creations: Adam and Eve cannot speak, and God knows that he has to blame himself for this. But Saramago deviates from the usual depictions of Paradise right at the beginning, and he makes God out as a rather ridiculous being. But it soon turned out that this was not case, and Cain isn’t just an afterthought at the end of a lifetime, but an excellent, fresh novel – it’s a worthy closing piece of a great oeuvre.Įven though the protagonist of the novel is Cain, the story starts not with him but with Adam, Eve and their life in Paradise.

Cain is the last novel by José Saramago and I was somewhat afraid that for this reason it might lack that wit, originality and playfulness which characterize his earlier books.

Cain by josé saramago