Death with Interruptions
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- ¥1,600
Publisher Description
This novel by the Nobel Prize-winning author asks what happens when the grim reaper decides to stop reaping: "A novel to die for."—The Washington Post
On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This of course causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially celebration—flags are hung out on balconies, people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life.
Then reality hits home—families are left to care for the permanently dying, life-insurance policies become meaningless, and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots. Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets, and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small d, were to become human and fall in love?
"This novel has many pleasures."—The New York Times
"Arguably the greatest writer of our time."—Chicago Tribune
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Saramago's philosophical page-turner hinges on death taking a holiday. And, Saramago being Saramago, he turns what could be the stuff of late-night stoner debate into a lucid, playful and politically edgy novel of ideas. For reasons initially unclear, people stop dying in an unnamed country on New Year's Day. Shortly after death begins her break (death is a woman here), there's "a catastrophic collapse" in the funeral industry; disruption in hospitals of "the usual rotational process of patients coming in, getting better or dying"; and general havoc. There's much debate and discussion on the link between death, resurrection and the church, and while "the clandestine traffic of the terminally ill" into bordering countries leads to government collusion with the criminal "self-styled maphia," death falls in love with a terminally ill cellist. Saramago adds two satisfying cliffhangers how far can he go with the concept, and will death succumb to human love? The package is profound, resonant and bonus entertaining.
