![]() The Double hums with imaginative energy, and intrigues both by its central mystery and by its author’s playful habit of assisting the reader (“Tertuliano’s. ![]() Through the breathless hurtling lengthy paragraphs that are Saramago’s trademark, we watch the timid academic unravel as he contacts Claro (through a letter Tertuliano signs with the name of his sometime sweetheart Maria de Paz), meets the actor at the latter’s home (in a very amusing scene, during which the two physically identical men even examine each other naked), and-in a melodramatic climax reminiscent of “Santa Clara’s” movies-undergoes a climactic exchange of identities, which Saramago caps with a bold surprise ending. Obsessed by the coincidence, Afonso scans more and more films, identifies his “double” as journeyman actor Daniel Santa Clara, and learns the performer’s real name: Antonio Claro. ![]() ![]() An unidentified supporting actor in the film is the image of Tertuliano himself, five years earlier. Protagonist Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced high-school history teacher whose life is irretrievably altered when he watches a videotaped romantic comedy recommended to him by a colleague. The theme of shared identity, treated by such masters as Poe, Stevenson, and Dostoevsky, animates the 1998 Nobel winner’s latest. ![]()
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