“The Double”
by José Saramago
Published: October 2005
ISBN: 0156032589

(Updated: October 22, 2007.)

From the Publisher…

Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a history teacher in a secondary school. He is divorced, involved in a rather one-sided relationship with a bank clerk, and he is depressed. To lift his depression, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film and is unimpressed. During the night, noises in his apartment wake him. He goes into the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video, and as he watches in astonishment he sees a man who looks exactly like him-or, more specifically, exactly like the man he was five years before, mustachioed and fuller in the face. He sleeps badly.

Against his own better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursue his double. As he establishes the man’s identity, what begins as a whimsical story becomes a dark meditation on identity and, perhaps, on the crass assumption behind cloning-that we are merely our outward appearance rather than the sum of our experiences.

What a strange book! Such a paradox somehow.

If you don’t know José Saramago’s writing style and if you are a fan of “writing”, I highly recommend that you pick up one of his books. He absolutely throws all rules aside and writes, seemingly, in one long run-on sentence. And through this the thoughts, dialogues, decriptions, internal conversations and the switch from imagining to happening is also seamless. It is amazing and wonderful and such a pleasure. Notably too if you are a fan of language, I recommend reading his works too. And I highly commend the translator :o)

Beyond “that”, I am baffled about the original premise of the book. It is, as described above, the story of a man discovering that he is or has a “double”. And this discovery sets off a series of existential crises the likes of which are beyond me to imagine. All along I kept thinking “I don’t get it.” but given the wonderful writing and language, I kept with it. I thought that maybe, as with The Cave something, some other meaning, some introduction to something that I hadn’t thought of before, would find its way into my brain. And, well, now that I’m finished, maybe it has and I just don’t know it yet.

Such a pleasure to read. Such a strange subject. Overall, I give this book a three out of five hearts on my scale.