The duplicate man

Description

What happens when Tertuliano Máximo Afonso discovers at the age of thirty-eight that an individual lives in his city who is his exact copy and with whom he has no blood ties?? That is the question that Saramago, exploring the depths of the soul again, poses in The Duplicate Man. How do we know who we are? What does identity consist of?? What defines us as individual and unique people?? Can we assume that our voice, our features, down to the smallest distinctive mark, are repeated in another person? Could we exchange ourselves with our double without our loved ones noticing?? Innovating against the conventions of the novel, Saramago turns the narrating voice into an active subject, in a meta-literary game that puts history at the service and goes far beyond strictly formal ruptures. A novel that is read with the eagerness of a story of intrigue but that immerses us in the essential questions of life.