Hello,
I recently finished reading José Saramago's All Names and I'm still processing it. The novel follows Senhor José, a lonely clerk in the Central Registry, who becomes obsessed with tracing the life of a random woman.
On the surface, it feels like a quiet story about bureaucracy, isolation, and obsession, but I can't shake the feeling that it's also a metaphor for something larger, maybe memory, identity, or how we're all reduced to names in records.
How do you interpret the symbolism and themes in this book? Did it resonate with you?
I think you're right to see All Names as more than just a story about Senhor José's odd obsession. To me, the novel works as a meditation on how fragile our identities are once they're reduced to bureaucratic records. A name on a card is both everything and nothing—it's proof that someone existed, but it strips away the richness of their life. The Central Registry almost feels like a metaphor for death or oblivion, while José's pursuit reflects our human need to rescue meaning from anonymity. For me, it resonated deeply as a reminder that we all long to be remembered as more than just "names."
I think All Names is about more than Senhor José's strange quest, it's a reflection on identity and memory. The Central Registry represents how society reduces people to records, stripping away their individuality. By chasing after the woman, and through his visit (https://alltimenames.com/) into her life's traces, José is pushing back against that reduction, trying to give life and meaning back to a name that would otherwise be forgotten. For me, the book resonates as a reminder that behind every name is a full human story, and it asks us to think about how we're remembered and what it means to truly exist beyond paperwork.