All the Names

Senhor José is a minor official in a registry office. He lives alone and spends his days in the documentation of the bare essentials – birth, marriage and death – of the lives of people he doesn't know. By chance he comes across a woman's file, in which her date and place of birth are not recorded, and his ordered, restricted life is turned upside down. Determined to discover more about the woman, he breaches all the regulations which have previously ruled his life. His quest becomes an obsession and gives a new meaning to his life yet his attempt to play God with other peoples' lives is destined to create new mysteries and complexities. In Senhor José, drawn from isolation into contact with the messy realities of human relationships, Saramago has created one of his most memorable characters and All The Names is one of his most subtle and engaging novels.

About the Author

José Saramago is one of the most important international writers of the last hundred years. Born in Portugal in 1922 in the small rural village of Azinhaga, he was in his fifties when he came to prominence as a writer with the publication of Baltasar and Blimunda. A huge body of work followed, which included plays, poetry, short stories, non-fiction and over a dozen novels, translated into more than forty languages, and in 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. He died in June 2010.