In The cave, Portuguese-born José Saramago reminds me of two, on the face of it, very different writers: Douglas Adams and Miguel de Cervantes.

The novel is an allegory about the power of human love to face down soulless authoritarianism. Cipriano Algor, a potter, inhabits a bleak futuristic landscape dominated by the Centre, an Orwellian institution providing accommodation, employment and leisure to the growing number of people whose lives are becoming unsustainable outside its