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The Double
  • Published: 1 December 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099461654
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $35.00

The Double

Formats & editions
EBook
20 Sept 2013
Paperback
1 Dec 2005
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Wherein lies our identity? An existential thriller and work of literature that takes on the essential questions of life

Watching a rented video, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is shocked to notice that one of the actors is identical to him in every physical detail. He embarks on a secret quest to find his double and sets in motion a train of events that he cannot control. Saramago's novel explores the nature of individuality and examines the fear and insecurity that arise when our singularity comes under threat, when even a wife cannot tell the original from the imposter...
  • Published: 1 December 2005
  • ISBN: 9780099461654
  • Imprint: Vintage Classics
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 304
  • RRP: $35.00
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About the author

José Saramago

JOSÉ DE SOUSA SARAMAGO, (November 1922 - June 2010), was a Portuguese writer and recipient of the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the theopoetic human factor. More than two million copies of Saramago's books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. He was a founding member of the National Front for the Defense of Culture in Lisbon in 1992, and co-founder with Orhan Pamuk, of the European Writers' Parliament (EWP).
portrait photo of José Saramago

Also by José Saramago

Cain
The Elephant's Journey
Small Memories
The First Boat
An Unexpected Light
The Silence of Water
The Lizard
See all

Praise for The Double

In the pacy denouement the consequences of the hero's actions are played out with surprising deftness... [An] extraordinarily bold and peculiar romance

The Times

Quite unlike anything else

London Review of Books

A Borgesian fable with a marvellous flavour all its own

Phillip Hensher, Books of the Year, Spectator

Indebted to Borges and with a nod to Auster, he manages to surpass both with the audacity and sheer erudition of his prose

Catherine Taylor, The Guardian

Cleverly written and left me with lots to think about...a very good book

http://www.farmlanebooks.co.uk/

A comic and profound exploration of the self... A uniquely seductive writer

Daily Telegraph

Thought-provoking, scrupulously constructed and narrated with buoyant high spirits

Times Literary Supplement

The Double is Saramago at his most practised and polished. It is philosophy and thriller rolled into one

Independent

Written with gusto, wit an imaginative energy...an urgent and topical masterpiece

Literary Review