This semi-allegory is certainly not one of Saramago's more noteworthy offerings. Afonso has several hokey 'dialogues' with 'common sense' his situation, which might be the germ for an excellent short story, is stretched out far beyond the length it deserves. Narrating in his usual long, rambling sentences, Saramago suspends his characters and their actions in fussy authorial asides. Soon the two are in a competition that involves sex and power. The actor, a rather sleazy fellow, resents Afonso's presence, as if his identical appearance were a sort of ontological theft. Finally tracking the man down, he suggests a meeting. Soon Afonso is feverishly renting videos, trying to find the actor's name, while hiding his project from his suspicious colleague, his lover and his mother. After his dismissal from Diário de Notícias in 1975, Saramago embraced his writing more seriously and the following years he published a series of important works including Manual de Pintura e Caligrafia (1977), Objecto Quase (1978), Levantado do Chão (1980) and Viagem a Portugal (1981). The video itself is a forgettable comedy, but the actor who plays the minor role of hotel clerk (so minor he isn't listed in the credits) is Afonso's physical double.

On the suggestion of a colleague, one night Máximo watches a video that changes everything. Middle-aged, divorced and in a relationship with a woman, Maria da Paz, he is bored with life. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a history teacher in an unnamed metropolis (presumably Lisbon). The Double by Jose Saramago is the story of a history teacher who, while watching a film, spots a minor actor who is his exact physical double. The double motif, which has fascinated authors as diverse as Poe, Dostoyevski and Nabokov, is revived in this surprisingly listless novel by Portuguese master Saramago.

The double book jose saramago