El hombre duplicado

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 is not linked by blood? That is the question that Saramago, once again exploring the depths of the soul, poses in The Duplicated Man. How to 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, even the smallest distinguishing mark, are repeated in another person? Could we exchange ourselves with our double without our relatives perceiving it? Innovating against the conventions of the novel, Saramago turns the narrator voice into an active subject, in a metaliterary game that he puts at the service of the story and that goes far beyond strictly formal ruptures. A novel that is read with the avidity of a story of intrigue but that immerses us in the essential questions of life.