Objecto Quasi
short story collection by José Saramago

Objecto Quasi is a Portuguese collection of short stories by author José Saramago published in 1978.
It was translated to English in 2012 under the title The Lives of Things
In 2010, a cinema adaptation of one of its stories was released under the name Embargo. In "The Chair", a dictator's seat is slowly being eroded until he collapses on the floor – a clear reference to the fall of Salazar, the Portuguese dictator. In the stories, men and things form the world, whose dynamics are shaken by distance or disunity.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Objecto Quasi” is short story collection by José Saramago. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Objecto, Quasi and short, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “short story collection by José Saramago” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jun 25, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q7269483. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1978, 2012 and 2010.
A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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This entry incorporates text from “Objecto Quasi” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.