The Double by José Saramago
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Quantum Physics of Identity

"Only a common sense with the imagination of a poet could have invented the wheel." Not a bad self-referential summary of Saramago's The Double.

This book is common sense and imagination applied to human identity and the result is a literary wheel turning round and round in the minds of two apparently identical individuals. Is one merely a copy of the other? Are their fates entangled like quantum particles? Do they become parts of the other simply by knowing of the other's existence? How random is life anyway?

Once again Saramago creates a situation in which to explore the oddness of being alive and knowing it.

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