Factory worker Joseph Walser conducts a life of bizarre patterns and routines: he tends to a secret collection of nondescript objects, plays dice every Saturday with his fellow workers, and carries on circuitous philosophical discussions with his boss. At the center of Walser’s life is the mysterious and volatile “machine” he operates each day on the factory floor with a devotion both spiritual and erotic. Even as war breaks out and his city is occupied by a foreign army, Walser’s habits remain unchanged—until a violent confrontation with his beloved machine completely disrupts his life. 

From one of Portugal’s most important contemporary writers, Joseph Walser’s Machine is a powerful, unnerving account of human existence and labor under various regimes of control. In fluid but exacting prose, Tavares deconstructs reality only to confront us with its starkest forms, revealing how the logical search for meaning can lead to moral indifference and catastrophe.