EUROPEAN Book Club: "The double"

Saturday, February 10, 2018 - 4:00pm to 6:00pm
Alliance Française de Vancouver

Organized by the Consulate General of Portugal in Vancouver and EUNIC Canada-Vancouver, with the support of the Camões Institute for Cooperation and Language, the next meeting with the EU Book Club, moderated by Sandy Gualdino, will be with a Portuguese novel by José Saramago.
 

“The Double”
("O Homem Duplicado")

In 1998, the Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to José Saramago, the first and only Portuguese writer to receive such an honour. To mark the 20^th anniversary of the award, the book club will be dedicated to his novel “O Homem Duplicado”, the duplicated man translated in English as “The Double”. Published in 2002, it tells the story of Tertuliano Maximo Afonso an ordinary history teacher that becomes obsessed with a man he sees while watching a movie and that looks exactly like him. Against his own better judgment he decides to pursue his double. As he establishes the man's identity, what begins as a whimsical story becomes a dark meditation on identity and, perhaps, on the crass assumptions behind cloning - that we are merely our outward appearance rather than the sum of our experiences.    

A “wonderfully twisted meditation on identity and individuality” from a Nobel Prize–winning author who pushes fiction to its very limits (The Boston Globe).

The Author

José Saramago (1922-2010) a writer from a working-class background was 60 when he had his first major success with “The memorial of the Convent” (or “Baltasar and Blimunda” in some translations). After his breakthrough, he quickly established an international reputation with novels that combine surrealist experimentation with a kind of sardonic peasant pragmatism and a distinctive narrative style. More than two million copies of his books have been sold in Portugal alone and his work has been translated into 25 languages. In 1999, the José Saramago Literary Prize was established in his honour to recognize young authors writing in Portuguese.

Note: The English translation of the novel is available in paperback at amazon.com, amazon.ca and chapters.indigo.ca. It is also available at the Vancouver Public Library. The movie “The Enemy” directed by Dennis Villeneuve is an adaptation of the novel. 

Admission is free, but please register by e-mail: eubookclub@alliancefrancaise.ca

Light refreshments will follow, courtesy of the Consulate General of Portugal

With the support of: