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The Lives of Things by José Saramago My rating: 4 of 5 stars 'The Lives of Things' is a collection of six short stories originally published as 'Objecto Quase' in 1978. The epigraph by Marx marks, uninhibitedly, themes political and social which the author essentially elaborated upon in his later fiction, especially in 'The Stone Raft', 'The Cave' and the tour de force, 'Blindness'.   'The Chair' opens the book, in the stream of consciousness narration, and obliquely reflects on the political state of affairs under the Salazar regime. The subject of the fall of the chair takes the reader on a trip to imagine, understand and question the conceptual contours of this fall which, in the case, was inevitable. Still, the approach of presenting the manifestation of the rot, the behind-the-scenes work of an essential and yet seemingly inadvertent opposition set up by the too much-ness of one's proclaimed authority, is tongue in cheek to say