José Saramago is one of the greatest writers of modern Portugal, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature, author of the infamous “Gospel of Jesus”. “The Cave” is the last of his novels, which has not yet been translated into Russian. Cipriano Algor is sixty-four years old and is a potter by profession. He lives with his daughter Martha and her husband named Marsal, who works as a security guard for a gigantic trading organization known as the Center. When the Center refuses to buy his bowls and pots from Cipriano, he decides to start making clay dolls - and suddenly the Center's purchasing department orders him a huge batch of dolls, two hundred units of each model. And then Marsala is transferred from external to internal security, and the whole family moves to the Center. But one night Cipriano hears the noise of mysterious mechanisms, as if coming from underground, and decides to find a solution at all costs... For the first time in Russian, “an amazingly textured and deeply resonating rethinking of Plato’s allegory” (Time Out New York); another confirmation that “you can find love and change your life at any age” (Salon).