All the Names

From a Nobel Prize winner: ';A psychological, even metaphysical thriller that will keep you turning the pages...with growing alarm and alacrity.' The Seattle Times A Washington Post Book World Favorite Book of the Year Senhor Jose is a low-grade clerk in the city's Central Registry, where the living and the dead share the same shelf space. A middle-aged bachelor, he has no interest in anything beyond the certificates of birth, marriage, divorce, and death that are his daily routine. But one day, when he comes across the records of an anonymous young woman, something happens to him. Obsessed, Senhor Jose sets off to follow the thread that may lead him to the womanbut as he gets closer, he discovers more about her, and about himself, than he would ever have wished. The loneliness of people's lives, the effects of chance, the discovery of loveall coalesce in this extraordinary novel that displays the power and art of Jose Saramago in brilliant form.