The Double

After reading Blindness (De stad der Blinden) of José Saramago I definitely wanted to read more from this Nobel Prize winning author. I started in his book Het Schijnbestaan (Eng: The Cave, Orig: A Caverna) but haven't finished it yet. Blindness is one of my favourite books, however The Double seemed to be quite different.

Wondering about the name of the book 'De man in duplo' or 'The Man duplicated' instead of 'De dubbelganger' or 'The double'. However the Dutch name is more near to the original name and the meaning is also slightly different. The story is about a history teacher that finds someone exactly identical to himself in a B movie that he was watching. Saramago describes the thoughts of the history teacher and chooses a worst case scenerio, which is usually of most interest. The book is interesting because of its perspective, the way of telling, the considerations of the main character. However after reading the book, with an original ending, I hadn't got the impression that I read something really unique, something that leaves an impression. Also I thought the book hadn't got much progression in it, especially in the first half of it. However it was an interesting read, but it won't be one of my favourites. Those are still Blindness and "Nooit meer slapen" (Eng: Beyond Sleep) of W.F. Hermans. Also the book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer, that I am currently reading seems to be very good :-).