José Saramago
Hardcover | Pages: 324 pages Rating: 3.9 | 14007 Users | 1122 Reviews
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| Original Title: | O Homem Duplicado |
| ISBN: | 0151010404 (ISBN13: 9780151010400) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Characters: | Tertuliano Máximo Afonso, António Claro, Maria da Paz, Helena (José Saramago) |
Ilustration In Pursuance Of Books The Double
Tertuliano Maximo 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 an actor who looks exactly like him - or, more specifically, exactly like the man he was five years before, moustachioed and fuller in the face. He sleeps badly. Against his own better judgement, 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 assumptions behind cloning - that we are merely our outward appearance rather than the sum of our experiences.Point Containing Books The Double
| Title | : | The Double |
| Author | : | José Saramago |
| Book Format | : | Hardcover |
| Book Edition | : | Anniversary Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 324 pages |
| Published | : | October 4th 2004 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt (first published 2002) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. European Literature. Portuguese Literature. Cultural. Portugal. Novels. Literature. Magical Realism. Nobel Prize |
Rating Containing Books The Double
Ratings: 3.9 From 14007 Users | 1122 ReviewsEvaluate Containing Books The Double
Quantum Physics of Identity"Only a common sense with the imagination of a poet could have invented the wheel." Not a bad self-referential summary of Saramago's The Double. This book is common sense and imagination applied to human identity and the result is a literary wheel turning round and round in the minds of two apparently identical individuals. Is one merely a copy of the other? Are their fates entangled like quantum particles? Do they become parts of the other simply by knowing of theIt will take me some time to digest this book. I have just closed it. I missed Saramagos writing style, which is not everybody's thing (just read the 1-2 star reviews). His style sucks you in, it is hard to stop reading.This story belongs to those "dystopy" stories Saramago used to write, those "What if..."s. We are not offered a logical scientific explanation why there are two persons 100% alike, but this wasn't the scope of the story. I think it was all about how do you deal with this type of
If youre one of those readers who give low ratings to books only because you didnt like the characters personality traits and/or behaviour then dont even get close to this one. If your favourite books can be found on sale at the supermarket around the corner be warned, this one is definitely not for you. If turning the pages quickly is more important to you than to let yourself be carried away by good writing and philosophical thought provoking ideas to a satisfying ending, I definitely wouldnt
"...tell her the whole story from the beginning, about this extraordinary singular, astonishing, and never-before-seen case of the duplicate man, the unimaginable become reality, the absurd reconciled with the reason, the final proof that for God nothing is impossible, and that the science of this century is, as someone said, a fool." This is, a tale of double existence, a meditation on words, on numbers, on identity, on the self and existence of being. And a damn great thriller.The tale,
A fascinating, fascinating story, that I read it twice. It's one of those plots where you don't see the end coming. That's the kind I like. A secondary school history teacher rents a video out of boredom and discovers among the bit actors his double. Like waves spreading on the surface of a pond, the effects of this startling discovery spread far beyond the initial shock and surprise. The book is well written, with a unique narrative style in which the omniscient narrator repeatedly comments on
I picked this up in Peru while on holidays. Something to read while I lazed on a secluded beach in the north. Really the perfect environment to read... but this book was a real struggle.The first two thirds of the book was just so slow and unmemorable, I kept having to read passages over and over again and i'm still not sure whether it's his writing style or it was because I was so bored that it wouldn't sink in. It really didn't get good until the final third when the pace picked up.The ideas
I figured out the inevitable ending of this book about halfway through it, but getting to the end was certainly not tedious . The language (lyrically translated by Margaret Costa) is full of unusual but vivid imagery ("...she had noticed a kind of embarassed catch in his voice, a disharmony that occasionally distorted his delivery, like the characteristic vibrato produced by a cracked water jar when struck with the knuckles"), and the novel is filled with sophisticated phrases that fit oddly
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