Jose Saramago is one of the largest writers of modern Portugal, the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998, the author of the infamous “Gospel of Jesus” "The Cave" is the last of his novels, which has not yet been translated into Russian. Cipriano Algorou is sixty-four years old, by profession he is a potter. He lives with his daughter Martha and her husband named Marsal, who works as a security guard at a giant trade 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 procurement department orders him a huge batch of dolls, two hundred units of each model. And then Marsala is transferred from the external guard to the internal one and the whole family moves to the Center. But one night, Cipriano hears the noise of mysterious mechanisms, as if coming from the ground, and decides at all costs to find a solution...For the first time in Russian “amazingly textured and deeply resonating reinterpretation of Plato’s allegory” (Time Out New York) Another confirmation that “you can find love and change your life at any age” (Salon)