The cadence and rhythm of Saramago's prose supplants traditional punctuation, and easily sweeps the reader into his Kafkaesque fado of institutionalized loneliness and isolation. This complex, at times darkly humorous novel, follows forlorn everyman Senhor Jose as he journeys through a series of labyrinths--crumbling bureaucracies, necropolises, psychic desolation-- searching for human contact, compassion, and love. By the novel's end Senhor Jose, tethered by a tenuous, metaphorical algorithm (that will allow him to reverse, perhaps, the fate of the unknown woman), steps into darkness, not unlike Dionysus descending into Hades to retrieve the love of his life. All the Names is a wonderful and insightful book that challenges the reader to examine the fragile nature of our existence, and our fundamental need to connect with one another.