Cain Gets a Time Machine

God is a petulant, small-minded tyrant in José Saramagoâ??s final novel. Its protagonist, Cain, is sympathetic, a picaresque hero. But that description may give the wrong idea by implying ponderous qualities indicated by the phrase â??village atheist.â? Like that other largehearted, blasphemous comedian, Mark Twain, Saramago takes an alert interest in actual villages, and in the various villages of the mind. He perceives those literal and figurative human settlements as horrifying yet funny, a perspective that is the opposite of provincial.