The Story Archive

All the Names

José Saramago · 1997 CE · Novel · Portuguese · Contemporary

A clerk in the Central Registry, where the papers of the living and the dead are shelved in one unlit continuum, keeps a private collection of press clippings about famous people. The card of an unknown woman comes into his hands by accident, and to find her he starts breaking the rules of the office and then the law. Saramago names neither city nor country, and the Registry is the nearest his work comes to pure allegory.

Open All the Names in the archive — filters, lineage graph and full facet browsing.

Attributes

Genre
AllegoryMysteryPsychological
Theme
Isolation & AlienationObsessionIdentity & SelfDeath & Mortality
Archetype (Jung / Campbell)
EverymanExplorer
Plot structure
MysteryThe QuestLabyrinth Plot
Symbol / motif
The LabyrinthThe Book / ManuscriptThe Tomb
Conflict
vs Selfvs Society
Mode / tone
AllegoricalIronicElegiac
Culture / tradition
Portuguese

Closest analogues