Cain by José Saramago, Harvill Secker, $29.95.
You know that Woody Allen film Zelig, about a man who inexplicably bobs up in the background at key moments of history?
Well, that’s what Cain — the murderous brother of Abel in the Bible — does in this last satirical novel by Nobel laureate Jose Saramago. And boy, does this Cain like an argument.
He first takes God to task over the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden (“if he really didn’t want them to eat that fruit, it would have been easy enough simply not to have planted the tree or surrounded it with barbed wire”) then reappears at all the Old Testament high points — the walls of Jericho, at the foot of Mt Sinai with Moses, even on board Noah’s ark — constantly niggling about what he sees as the flaws and cruelty in God’s judgment.
In its way, it’s as provocative and irreligious as anything written by Richard Dawkins but Saramago’s tone is witty rather than fierce. It’s certainly a brave last book to write.
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