{"product_id":"9780547537986","title":"The Cave","description":"\u003cb\u003eAn unassuming family struggles to keep up with the ruthless pace of progress in “a genuinely brilliant novel” from a Nobel Prize winner (\u003ci\u003eChicago Tribune\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eA \u003c\/i\u003eLos Angeles Time\u003ci\u003es Best Book of the Year and a \u003c\/i\u003eNew York Times\u003ci\u003e Notable Book\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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. Marçal works there as a security guard, and Cipriano drives him to work each day before delivering his own humble pots and jugs. On one such trip, he is told not to make any more deliveries. People prefer plastic, apparently.\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e 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 penniless trio must move from the village into The Center. When mysterious sounds of digging emerge from beneath their new apartment, Cipriano and Marçal investigate; what they find transforms the family’s life, in a novel that is both “irrepressibly funny” (\u003ci\u003eThe Christian Science Monitor\u003c\/i\u003e) and a “triumph” (\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post Book World\u003c\/i\u003e).\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e “The struggle of the individual against bureaucracy and anonymity is one of the great subjects of modern literature, and Saramago is often matched with Kafka as one of its premier exponents. Apt as the comparison is, it doesn’t convey the warmth and rueful human dimension of novels like \u003ci\u003eBlindness \u003c\/i\u003eand \u003ci\u003eAll the Names\u003c\/i\u003e. Those qualities are particularly evident in his latest brilliant, dark allegory, which links the encroaching sterility of modern life to the parable of Plato’s cave . . . [a] remarkably generous and eloquent novel.” —\u003ci\u003ePublishers Weekly\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e  \u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eTranslated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa\u003c\/i\u003e","brand":"Houghton Mifflin Harcourt","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47120256925936,"sku":"9780547537986","price":17.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9780547537986_p0.jpg?v=1763716928","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9780547537986","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}