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Senhor José is a lowly clerk in the Central Registry, a vast bureaucratic archive in an unnamed city where the births, marriages and deaths of all citizens are recorded. For fun, he collects newspaper clippings about celebrities and begins to look for their records. One day, a stray record of an unknown woman falls into his hands, and he becomes obsessed with finding her, breaking the rules of the Registry. José Saramago uses his long sentences and dialogue without quotation marks to create a bleak comedy about loneliness, bureaucracy and the search for meaning.

Readers who like philosophical fiction and gentle absurdity will find a quiet, strange story.

Deep, inward-looking, open-ended and thought-provoking; a moderate read.

Best for readers like The Literary Connoisseur. Which reader are you?