Product Description

Senhor Jose is a minor official in a registry office, with a passion for reconstructing people's lives from the data in archive documents. One woman's file is particularly intriguing. She is dead, and he decides to trace her life backwards, from death to birth. But can he bring her back to life?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #96200 in Books
• Published on: 2000-06-01
• Original language: Portuguese
• Binding: Paperback
• 252 pages

Customer Reviews

The triumph of an ordinary man, Kafka with a human heartbeat
All the Names tells the story of a meek man, a worker in a Central Registry that seems almost infinite in size, with a Kafka-like quality to the structure and disciplines within. Senhor Jose is quiet and dedicated, with only a hobby of collecting titbits on famous people to occupy him.

He breaches all of the Registry's regulations, risking his job and his home, in order to copy details from the record cards for his collection. By chance, a record card of an ordinary woman comes his way, and his curiousity becomes an obsession, as he sets out to trace this woman, no matter what the cost.

Senhor Jose sets himself a quest, an arbitrary quest, but one which gives his mundane life meaning. The book is a detective story, a love story, a story about the oppression of authority and the way that people can overcome that oppression by finding small moments of joy.

The book is comic, sad and full of meaning. Saramago writes a highly significant book, yet uses simple prose to tell the story, making the themes all the more effective.

In my view, this is the closest thing there has been to the Perfect Novel. If you've ever read any Borges, Kafka or Calvino then you should discover Saramago as quickly as you can.

One exhausts superlatives
This is one of the most engrossing, absorbing and challenging books that I have read this year. The deceptive simplicity of the plot, which I do not wish to give away, is belied by the fabulous richness and complexity of the language Saramago uses. It deals with such diverse themes as loneliness, obsession, self-doubt, personal development and fruition with a mastery I have rarely seen equalled. A literary triumph, and a deserving Nobel-Prize winner.

one man's life and passion
More actually happens in this book than in Ricardo Reis but it is full of the same profound understanding of one man's soul and mind. You really live with Jose as he wanders through the registry, dodging the cobwebs with him and plodding the streets of Lisbon in the same rain, sensing the same reckless thrill at taking a taxi (an unheard of luxury) and almost sharing his passion for the lives othres and in particular one lady's.

It is incredibly lyrical and it sweeps you along, the sense of involvement with him is a a product of the wonderful storytelling skills of Saramago. Though I can read Portuguese, i read this in English and I think it is a fine translation as were the earlier translations by the great Giovanni Pontiero. He is not an easy author to translate as the books are so full of Portuguese myths and references to the Lusiads.