Tertuliano Maximo Afonso is a divorced, depressed history teacher. To lift his spirits, a colleague suggests he rent a certain video. Tertuliano watches the film, unimpressed. But during the night, when he is awakened by noises in his apartment, he goes into the living room to find that the VCR is replaying the video. He watches in astonishment as a man who looks exactly like him-or, more specifically, exactly like he did five years before, mustachioed and fuller in the face-appears on the screen. He sleeps badly. Against his better judgment, Tertuliano decides to pursue his double. As he roots out the man's identity, what begins as a whimsical story becomes a "wonderfully twisted meditation on identity and individuality" (The Boston Globe). Saramago displays his remarkable talent in this haunting tale of appearance versus reality.

若澤·薩拉馬戈（José Saramago，1922-2010）

葡萄牙作傢。1947年齣版首部小說《罪孽之地》，1995年獲葡萄牙語文學最高奬項卡濛斯文學奬。1998年，因其“充滿想象、同情和諷喻的寓言故事，不斷地使我們對虛幻的現實加深理解”，被授予諾貝爾文學奬。

薩拉馬戈的作品風格獨特，內涵深刻，作品主題大多關心的是人類的命運與世界的前途。寫作手法上，他創立瞭一種充滿想象、隱喻和諷刺的小說類型，贏得瞭無數讀者的贊譽。

他一生創作瞭數十部小說和其它文學作品，已經被翻譯成30多種語言，總銷售超過350萬冊，主要作品包括《修道院紀事》、《洞穴》、《大象旅行記》、《石筏》等。