From Publishers Weekly
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. Tertuliano Máximo Afonso is a history teacher in an unnamed metropolis (presumably Lisbon). Middle-aged, divorced and in a relationship with a woman, Maria da Paz, he is bored with life. On the suggestion of a colleague, one night Máximo watches a video that changes everything. 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. 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. Finally tracking the man down, he suggests a meeting. The actor, a rather sleazy fellow, resents Afonso's presence, as if his identical appearance were a sort of ontological theft. Soon the two are in a competition that involves sex and power. Narrating in his usual long, rambling sentences, Saramago suspends his characters and their actions in fussy authorial asides. 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. This semi-allegory is certainly not one of Saramago's more noteworthy offerings. Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Bookmarks Magazine
The Double received decidedly mixed reviews. Certain critics applaud the urgency with which Saramago questions the nature of identity in our current age and the "what if" scenario. Others believe that Shakespeare, Dumas, and Nabokov have more effectively employed the twin construct. No one denies that Saramago is a brilliant, engaging writer who has earned his eminent standing. However, most reviewers conclude that neither Afonso nor his double, Claro, are fully developed characters with vital inner lives. They are little more than devices through which Saramago funnels his existentialism. Although Costa receives across-the-board kudos for her faithful and elegant translation, many readers will ditch Saramago’s labyrinthine prose halfway through. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc.

From Booklist
The 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature continues to garner a reputation and readership far beyond his native Portugal. His latest novel is a provocative meditation on identity: specifically, the story of how ordinary history teacher Tertuliano Maxim Afonso awakens one morning to find a video that he's rented but not yet watched playing on his VCR. And one of the characters--the actor playing the role, that is--is the spitting image of Tertuliano, as he appeared about five years ago. Tertuliano is divorced, lonely, depressed--in other words, susceptible to filling in his time and mind with an obsession, which this situation quickly becomes. He decides to track down the actor who is his double, with disturbing, even dire, consequences. Saramago's typical stream-of-consciousness technique, although not easy for complacent readers, is beautifully lyrical here ("the first, subtle wash of early-morning lightness") and, at the same time, burrows deeply within the protagonist's thought process--entirely suitable and even necessary for such a cerebral yet shockingly personal exploration of what truly makes an individual unique and the concept that somewhere in the world it's possible that one's exact physical double exists. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
"THE DOUBLE begins by intriguing us, proceeds to entertain, charm and engage, annd ultimately manages to disturb."

Book Description
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.



About the Author
José Saramago is one of the most acclaimed writers in the world today. The author of numerous novels, in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

"A history teacher rents a video on the recommendation of a friend. Not a great fan of cinema, he watches the film unmoved, but wakes later that night unaccountably troubled by something he has subconsciously viewed. He gets up to watch the film again and discovers, to his horror, an actor who could be his twin, identical in every way except for the moustache he himself has not worn for five years." "Telling no-one of his discovery and wrought with anxiety, Tertuliano Maximo Afonso embarks on a quest to find the actor. By a process of elimination, and watching countless films, he manages to identify the "double" and secretly plots to make contact. But how will the struggling actor feel when confronted out of the blue by a man claiming to be identical to him in every way? A man proclaiming himself to be the original and the actor a duplicate?" Saramago's new 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 impostor.

FROM THE CRITICS

Richard Eder - The New York Times

It's tempting to think of [The Double] as his masterpiece. Certainly it is one of two or three, the allegory here not so tumultuously grand as in others, but more perfectly maneuvered.

Publishers Weekly

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. Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a history teacher in an unnamed metropolis (presumably Lisbon). Middle-aged, divorced and in a relationship with a woman, Maria da Paz, he is bored with life. On the suggestion of a colleague, one night Maximo watches a video that changes everything. 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. 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. Finally tracking the man down, he suggests a meeting. The actor, a rather sleazy fellow, resents Afonso's presence, as if his identical appearance were a sort of ontological theft. Soon the two are in a competition that involves sex and power. Narrating in his usual long, rambling sentences, Saramago suspends his characters and their actions in fussy authorial asides. 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. This semi-allegory is certainly not one of Saramago's more noteworthy offerings. Agent, Ray-Gede Mertin. (Oct.) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Library Journal

Upon viewing a video recommended by his colleague, depressed history teacher Tertuliano Maximo Afonso finds to his amazement that one of the bit players looks exactly like him. Painstakingly researching the actor's filmography and viewing his other films only serve to deepen his disturbance. Obsessed with finding some closure, the teacher seeks out the actor for a face-to-face meeting. Unfortunately, the meeting shakes the actor's foundations even deeper than Afonso's, and as recompense, the actor reasons that an evening spent with the teacher's girlfriend as Afonso is a fair trade. Readers of Saramago should know that this thriller-like plot is only a frame for the author's ideas on identity, but exactly what Saramago intends his twin characters to represent is hard to divine. There's also a surprising amount of dithering dialog, as if the author wanted to capture every mundanity that these enigmatic characters might say. Too ponderous for the average reader and lacking the intrigue that the premise implies, this will appeal mainly to fans of the Nobel-winning author. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 6/1/04.] Marc Kloszewski, Indiana Free Lib., PA Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews