The Cave - Jose Saramago

Another one of Saramago's masterpieces strings together the story of a potter's world being destroyed by the commercialism and capitalism of the present day world. The potter is Saramago's main character in the story through whom he elucidates very deep facts of life on almost every page of the book. The book has the typical characteristics of using no punctuation for conversations other than a comma, long paragraphs that flow over pages and vivid description of things which seem to be unrelated to the ongoing theme yet don't feel out of place. Most of times it feels as if you're walking along a serenely flowing river and all of sudden you fall down this endless waterfall, splash around in the pool at the bottom before continuing the journey over the same topology over and over again. Nonetheless I felt a little overwhelmed by the almost non-stop barrage of wisdom splashed across the pages a lot of which felt repetitive and probably not fitting the character of an uneducated potter who has done nothing in his life more than making pottery for this commercial establishement referred to as 'the center' which reminds one of the Orwelian 'big brother'. The story though is quite apt in today's time and is worth reflecting upon.