segunda-feira, 6 de fevereiro de 2012

"Caim" de Saramago na revista Locus de Janeiro de 2012


Na edição de Janeiro da revista Locus, o crítico Gary K. Wolfe resenha (positivamente) a edição de língua inglesa do romance Caim de José Saramago. Faz sentido ser na edição de Janeiro: Saramago foi, por mérito próprio, um Janus literário com uma face voltada para a literatura contemporânea e outra virada para a fantástica.

«Several years ago, in reviewing José Saramago's Blindness in these pages, I noted that, unlike many widely respected literary figures (Saramago won the Nobel in 1998), he used fantastic themes not just for their metaphoric avoirdupois, but worked them out with the same sort of plot logic a genre writer might devote to them (...) The same holds true of his final novel, Cain (...) The result is not only a provocative and often very funny re-imagining of some of the Old Testament's greatest hits - at times reminiscent of Twain or Vonnegut or even James Morrow - but also a time-travel fable (...) the novel sometimes comes off as a headlong comic monologue (we could imagine a lot of these lines being delivered by the Monty Pyhton crew or even Mel Brooks). Well rendered by Margaret Jull Castro's snappy translation, Cain is a wise and angry delight, and a very appropriate exit line for a gadfly.»