Death with Interruptions
by José Saramago
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Nobel Prize-winner Jose Saramago's brilliant new novel poses the question -- what happens when the grim reaper decides there will be no more death? 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. show more 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, became human and were to fall in love? show lessTags
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This book left me wanting more, and perhaps not in a good way. Because of the distance between the reader and the events of the first section -- we see a series of vignettes around events related to the dearth of death, but all we really do is see them; we aren't immersed -- this feels like it should be a sociology text about the events a bureaucracy would have to deal with in the event of stoppage of death.** As a result, that is what I wanted. I wanted to see a by-sector breakdown of the economic impact or demographic calculations by month. When there's no emotional impact to the story, I don't want to read this as a novel. I wanted to read this as a social scientist.
(**There is a bit of a cottage industry in political science and show more related fields around this, dominated by government agency authors, actually: assessments and contingency plans around seemingly impossible events. Did you think FEMA doesn't have a plan for a zombie invasion? Or the political economy literature hasn't calculated what would happen if the birth rate dropped to zero? Oh, friends, these all exist. I have read many of them. A good speculative paper in a peer-reviewed academic journal by an EPA deputy director comes out and I am all in.)
Death with Interruptions could have been more compelling if it had taken its distance to a logical conclusion and included some semblance of accuracy in terms of numbers or complexity or completeness. We get a tiny glimpse. But we don't get a tiny glimpse in a family of characters we love, where macrocosm is shown through microcosm. We get an attempt at a variety of sectors but with no context or completeness. Did you know what the magnitude of this was? I didn't. I wanted to see a report.
You might think that because I am a social scientist by training, I want this always. Not so. I read Children of Men and never thought that the second half of the book should include regressions. Children of Men packs an emotional punch. I have thought to myself, in the years since I read the book and saw the movie, I wonder what a Western government would do about this as a public policy issue, but I never wondered it during the book or movie. (By the way, there are journal articles by economists, sociologists, and others taking this issue from different viewpoints, and they are all excellent-slash-horrifying.) I was immersed in that tale as a reader and my statistical mind was dormant. This one didn't immerse me the same way. Each time a new group of people popped up -- for instance, the "maphia" or the undertakers -- I just wanted to see some numbers about mortality rates so I could estimate timeframes for policy impact. How much could the "maphia" actually be expected to make? How many public servant FTEs was the "maphia" actually taking over? What is the density of undertaking compared to population in urban versus rural areas? How many bodies would we even be expecting, in the first place? The NIH has a fantastic epidemiological model for pandemics where you can insert your own estimates around mortality, time period, population density, and other factors, and I wanted Saramago to have presented some charts at the end of the book so I could understand the magnitude of the issue.
Instead it all felt distant, incomplete, and hard to quantify. But not hard to quantify in the way that emotional, character-driven books like these can be where you don't care that you don't know any numbers.
I guess what I'm saying is, if you're going distant, go full robot. If you're going novel, give me something to hold on to. show less
(**There is a bit of a cottage industry in political science and show more related fields around this, dominated by government agency authors, actually: assessments and contingency plans around seemingly impossible events. Did you think FEMA doesn't have a plan for a zombie invasion? Or the political economy literature hasn't calculated what would happen if the birth rate dropped to zero? Oh, friends, these all exist. I have read many of them. A good speculative paper in a peer-reviewed academic journal by an EPA deputy director comes out and I am all in.)
Death with Interruptions could have been more compelling if it had taken its distance to a logical conclusion and included some semblance of accuracy in terms of numbers or complexity or completeness. We get a tiny glimpse. But we don't get a tiny glimpse in a family of characters we love, where macrocosm is shown through microcosm. We get an attempt at a variety of sectors but with no context or completeness. Did you know what the magnitude of this was? I didn't. I wanted to see a report.
You might think that because I am a social scientist by training, I want this always. Not so. I read Children of Men and never thought that the second half of the book should include regressions. Children of Men packs an emotional punch. I have thought to myself, in the years since I read the book and saw the movie, I wonder what a Western government would do about this as a public policy issue, but I never wondered it during the book or movie. (By the way, there are journal articles by economists, sociologists, and others taking this issue from different viewpoints, and they are all excellent-slash-horrifying.) I was immersed in that tale as a reader and my statistical mind was dormant. This one didn't immerse me the same way. Each time a new group of people popped up -- for instance, the "maphia" or the undertakers -- I just wanted to see some numbers about mortality rates so I could estimate timeframes for policy impact. How much could the "maphia" actually be expected to make? How many public servant FTEs was the "maphia" actually taking over? What is the density of undertaking compared to population in urban versus rural areas? How many bodies would we even be expecting, in the first place? The NIH has a fantastic epidemiological model for pandemics where you can insert your own estimates around mortality, time period, population density, and other factors, and I wanted Saramago to have presented some charts at the end of the book so I could understand the magnitude of the issue.
Instead it all felt distant, incomplete, and hard to quantify. But not hard to quantify in the way that emotional, character-driven books like these can be where you don't care that you don't know any numbers.
I guess what I'm saying is, if you're going distant, go full robot. If you're going novel, give me something to hold on to. show less
Near perfect. This was a challenging and sophisticated novel that I might normally have found pretentious except Saramago blends just the right amount of humor and poignancy to keep it grounded and engaging.
The story is split into two parts. In the first, death (yes, with a small "d") takes a holiday. In a small, unnamed European country, no one dies for several months. The narrator tells us what this means - for ordinary people, for the government, for the undertakers and insurance companies, etc. It's a kind of meta-narrative, where the few "characters" are unnamed - the prime minister, the king, the head of state television. It's very theoretical and cerebral.
And then Saramago changes gear, focuses in on death herself as a character show more and her relationship with one individual who is supposed to die. It's a beautiful and bittersweet second part of the novel that raised the book to a near 5-star read for me. For all of the focus on death as the main driver in the novel, it is really about life and what it means to live and to live well and meaningfully.
I am so pleased I stuck with this one. It was a rewarding read. show less
The story is split into two parts. In the first, death (yes, with a small "d") takes a holiday. In a small, unnamed European country, no one dies for several months. The narrator tells us what this means - for ordinary people, for the government, for the undertakers and insurance companies, etc. It's a kind of meta-narrative, where the few "characters" are unnamed - the prime minister, the king, the head of state television. It's very theoretical and cerebral.
And then Saramago changes gear, focuses in on death herself as a character show more and her relationship with one individual who is supposed to die. It's a beautiful and bittersweet second part of the novel that raised the book to a near 5-star read for me. For all of the focus on death as the main driver in the novel, it is really about life and what it means to live and to live well and meaningfully.
I am so pleased I stuck with this one. It was a rewarding read. show less
There are some books that defy description, that have to be experienced. Saramago’s Death with Interruptions is one such book.
The thesis is intriguing. One day, people stop dying. At this time of pandemic gyrations, the convulsions of the government and churches forced to deal with the fallout from this lack of dying are both wickedly wise and so funny I laughed out loud. The Church is sent for a spin- if no eternity, then what do they have to use to persuade people to follow them? The government has no idea what to do with all the undying, including the Queen Mother- because, though people don’t die, they don’t exactly live, either. They hang, fixed in time, unable to do either.
There are those who immediately find ways to make show more money out of such a situation- undertakers plead financial ruin and are reduced to government-insisted buryings of pets; organized crime dips in in a variety of ways; governments cut deals; and one family figures out a solution that destabilizes life even more.
It’s odd to read this at the same time that some States in the US are hinting that old people should get Covid-19 and just die, take one for the team as it were. The context seems so parallel...
Saramago’s prose is written in tremendously long twisting sentences, but each is like a garden path, with pleasing asides popping up throughout. Every phrase is a gem. Many sentences turn around and snap a funny vision at the end that took me by enough surprise I burst out laughing.
How does the situation work itself out? Ah, that I can’t reveal, except to warn you to avoid and lavender coloured envelopes in the mail. show less
The thesis is intriguing. One day, people stop dying. At this time of pandemic gyrations, the convulsions of the government and churches forced to deal with the fallout from this lack of dying are both wickedly wise and so funny I laughed out loud. The Church is sent for a spin- if no eternity, then what do they have to use to persuade people to follow them? The government has no idea what to do with all the undying, including the Queen Mother- because, though people don’t die, they don’t exactly live, either. They hang, fixed in time, unable to do either.
There are those who immediately find ways to make show more money out of such a situation- undertakers plead financial ruin and are reduced to government-insisted buryings of pets; organized crime dips in in a variety of ways; governments cut deals; and one family figures out a solution that destabilizes life even more.
It’s odd to read this at the same time that some States in the US are hinting that old people should get Covid-19 and just die, take one for the team as it were. The context seems so parallel...
Saramago’s prose is written in tremendously long twisting sentences, but each is like a garden path, with pleasing asides popping up throughout. Every phrase is a gem. Many sentences turn around and snap a funny vision at the end that took me by enough surprise I burst out laughing.
How does the situation work itself out? Ah, that I can’t reveal, except to warn you to avoid and lavender coloured envelopes in the mail. show less
4.5 The only thing keeping this from 5 is how densely it physically appears on the page and reads like a long continuous breath. I needed a little space to think! It is part satire, part fable/fairy tale and so profound, but so cleverly presented and translated. The humor still comes through, which is always a delight in translation and it has clarity of some really deep concepts too. Here's the premise: starting on Jan 1 in a nameless year (but modern) in a nameless country (Portugal? like the author's homeland?) no one dies. This persists for 7 months and throws the country and everyone's lifestyle into chaos! Turns out immortality is not the gift we think it would be. Here are a few of the subsequent problems - those who were ill on show more the verge of death are just hanging on in no quality of life - including the queen mother. The solution after a couple months and with much moral examination is to smuggle them over the borders into adjacent countries, where they die instantly. This provokes a need for sentries, and another need for a mafia *(maphia here so as to distinguish from the other) to do the bribing and dealing. It also doesn't do much for international relations. Funeral directors, morticians, autopsists are out of business and take to using their services on pets who are not immune to the death reprieve (different death department) hospitals and nursing homes (called eventide homes here) are overfilled because people still age and get ill, but just don't die. Life insurance companies are making out, but since this is a socialist country, reparations must be made...the govt. and constitutional monarchy are struggling to adjust to all the unanticipated issues that have occurred. Finally death (not to be confused with Death) delivers a missive to the national TV station: in 12 hours death will resume. More chaos! She (there is great justification for why death is female) makes a deal: people will have a one week notice delivered via post in a special violet envelope that gives them the alert. Chaos ensues again. death is meticulous and these missives are on an auto-pilot system with no errors and no changes - until one single letter is returned to sender - 3 times. The original recipient, a male cellist age 50, is totally undistinguished and death is perplexed about this anomaly, and takes great pains to sort it out, but the result is a spoiler. This small powerhouse of a book is one that needs to be discussed! Two epigraphs set the tone: "We will know less and less what it means to be human." from the Book of Predictions and "If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields." Wittgenstein Some great quotes: Newspaper headlines after death returns: Immortal But Not For Long, Checkmate, No Escape from Destiny, What Did We Do To Deserve This and a handful of other humorous ones. From death herself: "...in case you don't know it, words move, they change from one day to the next, they are as unstable as shadows, are themselves shadows, which both are and have ceased to be, soap bubbles, shells in which one can barely hear a whisper, tree stumps." 123 Regarding the cellist and his erstwhile fate: "The wretched cellist, who, ever since his birth had been marked out to die a young man of only forty-nine summers had just brazenly entered his fiftieth year, thus bringing into disrepute destiny, fate, fortune, the horoscope, luck and all the other powewrs that devote themsleve by every possible means worthy and unworthy to thwarting our very human desire to live. They were all utterly discredited." 157 In death's conversation with her scythe she says "There's only one place in the world death can't get into...what they call a coffin, casket, tomb, funeral urn, vault, sepulcher, I can't enter there, only the living can, once I've killed them of course. All those words to say the same sad thing. That's what these people are like, they're never quite sure what they mean." 185 show less
O livro começa com uma narrativa quase farsesca acerca de um evento insólito que ocorre num país sem nome. Trata-se da interrupção de um dia para o outro das mortes dentro da fronteira do país. Num belo dia ninguém morre e assim permanece sem morrer pessoa alguma, criando uma série de reações em cadeia tragicômicos, e diria até de humor negro. Mas Saramago não se perde numa comédia e o assunto é tratado sério e se desenrola com muitas discussões pertinentes sobre a situação. A narrativa bem ao modo Saramago de parágrafos extralongos com diálogos e comentários misturados ao texto usando de maiúsculas e vírgulas de forma não convencional. Num dado momento a história ganha ares mais poéticos e intimistas quando a show more morte resolve retornar ao modus operandi normal de as pessoas morrerem, mas com uma diferença, cada pessoa receberia com uma semana de antecedência uma carta da morte avisando que sua vida duraria apenas mais 7 dias. Finalmente quando uma carta é retornada e o remetente não morrendo na data marcada, a história ganha outra dinâmica em que o autor constrói o personagem morte com uma maestria de gênio, desembocando num final curioso e imprevisível. O narrador é do tipo onipresente e onisciente até o momento da história, se mostrando tão perplexo quanto os leitores pelo desenvolvimento dos fatos. Também dialoga com o leitor tentando antecipar as indagações que eventualmente ele, o leitor, faria. Saramago constrói uma verdadeira ode à vida, que precisa ser vivida, sem que vivamos apenas esperando o nosso fim. show less
"The following day, no one died." Thus begins this odd little book in which Saramago imagines what happens in a country in which no one dies. People who should die remain just this side of death. At first, the country rejoices. Death is vanquished! But then reality sets in. Who will care for those who ought to be dead? What will become of undertakers, and the issuers of life insurance policies? The Catholic Church realizes that if there is no death, there could no resurrection, and therefore no point to having a church. When it is discovered that death's hiatus is confined to one country, a profitable business springs up to smuggle across the border those who ought to be dead.
Then, after several months of no one dying, a letter on show more violet-colored paper mysteriously appears on the desk of the director-general of television, a letter from death (small "d", as she insists). The letter announces that people will start to die again, but that from now on they will receive due warning from her, in the form of a violet-colored letter. So death begins again, but, to her surprise, one letter keeps coming back to her. The intended recipient does not die on schedule. She, curious, follows him. What happens when death falls in love?
How does an individual react to the unexpected? How does a society? When social norms are upended, uncontrollably, what happens? show less
Then, after several months of no one dying, a letter on show more violet-colored paper mysteriously appears on the desk of the director-general of television, a letter from death (small "d", as she insists). The letter announces that people will start to die again, but that from now on they will receive due warning from her, in the form of a violet-colored letter. So death begins again, but, to her surprise, one letter keeps coming back to her. The intended recipient does not die on schedule. She, curious, follows him. What happens when death falls in love?
How does an individual react to the unexpected? How does a society? When social norms are upended, uncontrollably, what happens? show less
As the New Year begins, Death decides to take a holiday. It takes a while before people notice that no one is dying--those on their death beds remain suspended in a near death state, those in accidents which should have killed them, remain alive maimed or horribly injured.
After brief rejoicing, people begin to realize that it might not be such a good thing if nobody ever dies: What happens to the funeral and life insurance businesses? What happens to religion without a heavenly afterlife to look forward to?
Fortunately, Death is not on holiday in surrounding countries, and people begin to take their near-dead across the border, where they die instantly. Neighboring countries don't like this, however, and a whole industry of smuggling show more people across the border to die develops.
Like many of Saramago's books, this book raises a "What if?" question about something that is not possible, and follows it through a winding path to consider issues important to the world today. It is written in Saramago's characteristic style. For the most part it is not plot driven, and initially there are no "main characters". But who could resist reading a book that begins:
"The following day no one died. This fact, being absolutely contrary to life's rules provoked enormous, and, in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people's minds, for we have only to consider that in the entire forty volumes of universal history there is no mention, not even one exemplary case, of such a phenomenon ever having occurred, for a whole day to go by , with its generous allowance of twenty-four hours, diurnal and nocturnal, matutinal and vespertine, without one death from an illness, a fatal fall, a successful suicide, not one, not a single one."
Recommended. show less
After brief rejoicing, people begin to realize that it might not be such a good thing if nobody ever dies: What happens to the funeral and life insurance businesses? What happens to religion without a heavenly afterlife to look forward to?
Fortunately, Death is not on holiday in surrounding countries, and people begin to take their near-dead across the border, where they die instantly. Neighboring countries don't like this, however, and a whole industry of smuggling show more people across the border to die develops.
Like many of Saramago's books, this book raises a "What if?" question about something that is not possible, and follows it through a winding path to consider issues important to the world today. It is written in Saramago's characteristic style. For the most part it is not plot driven, and initially there are no "main characters". But who could resist reading a book that begins:
"The following day no one died. This fact, being absolutely contrary to life's rules provoked enormous, and, in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people's minds, for we have only to consider that in the entire forty volumes of universal history there is no mention, not even one exemplary case, of such a phenomenon ever having occurred, for a whole day to go by , with its generous allowance of twenty-four hours, diurnal and nocturnal, matutinal and vespertine, without one death from an illness, a fatal fall, a successful suicide, not one, not a single one."
Recommended. show less
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Elke roman van José Saramago opent met een paukenslag.Op de eerste bladzijden introduceert hij een hoogst ongewone toestand, die vaak door een even abrupte als absurde ingreep van hogerhand wordt geforceerd.
Zo'n openingszet, die alles op scherp zet en de lezer elektrocuteert, is een geraffineerde variant op het 'er was eens' van het sprookje. Dan is de moraal vaak niet ver weg meer. Dat is show more soms even slikken, juist bij zo'n geharnast moralist als Saramago. Hier is het dat niet: daarvoor is het verhaal te goed verteld, te geestig ook - en het verlangen dat erdoor gefileerd wordt, het anti-doodsverlangen, te vitaal. show less
Zo'n openingszet, die alles op scherp zet en de lezer elektrocuteert, is een geraffineerde variant op het 'er was eens' van het sprookje. Dan is de moraal vaak niet ver weg meer. Dat is show more soms even slikken, juist bij zo'n geharnast moralist als Saramago. Hier is het dat niet: daarvoor is het verhaal te goed verteld, te geestig ook - en het verlangen dat erdoor gefileerd wordt, het anti-doodsverlangen, te vitaal. show less
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Author Information
José Saramago was born on November 16, 1922. He spent most of his childhood on his parent's farm, except while attending school in Lisbon. Before devoting himself exclusively to writing novels in 1976, he worked as a draftsman, a publisher's reader, an editor, translator, and political commentator for Diario de Lisboa. He is indisputably show more Portugal's best-known literary figure and his books have been translated into more than 25 languages. Although he wrote his first novel in 1947, he waited some 35 years before winning critical acclaim for work such as the Memorial do Convento. His works include The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis, The Stone Raft, Baltasar and Blimunda, The History of the Siege of Lisbon, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and Blindness. At age 75, he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998 for his work in which "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony, continually enables us to apprehend an elusory reality." He died from a prolonged illness that caused multiple organ failure on June 18, 2010 at the age of 87. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Awards and Honors
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
Keltainen kirjasto (390)
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- As Intermitências da Morte
- Original title
- As Intermitências da Morte
- Alternate titles
- Death at Intervals
- Original publication date
- 2005
- People/Characters
- Death; the queen mother; the prime minister; the cardinal; the interior minister; the king (show all 9); the director-general of television; The cellist; death
- Epigraph
- We will know less and less what it means to be human.
- Book of Predictions
If, for example, you were to think more deeply about death, then it would be truly strange if, in so doing, you did not encounter new images, new linguistic fields.
- Wittgenstein
Saberemos cada vez menos o que é um ser humano. - Dedication
- For Pilar, my home.
- First words
- The following day, no one died.
No dia seguinte ninguém morreu. - Quotations
- This fact, being absolutely contrary to life's rules, provoked enormous, and in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people's minds, for we have only to consider that in the entire forty volumes of universal hi... (show all)story there is no mention, not even one exemplary case, of such a phenomenon ever having occurred, for a whole day to go by, with its generous allowance of twenty-four hours, diurnal and nocturnal, matutinal and vespertine, without one death from an illness, a fatal fall, or a successful suicide, not one, not a single one.
At most, it might push them toward the place where death presumably was, but it would be pointless, futile, because at that precise moment, as unreachable as ever, she would take a step back and keep her distance.
One cannot be too careful with words, they change their minds just as people do.
By the way, we feel we must mention that death, by herself and alone, with no external help, has always killed far less than mankind has.
it makes no difference because everything will have but one ending, the ending that a part of yourself will always have to think about and which is the black stain on your hopeless humanity.
This is what insomniacs say when they have not slept a wink all night, thinking, poor things, that they can fool sleep by asking for a little more, just a little more, when they have not yet been granted one minute or repose.
The man stirred again, it seems as if he's about to wake, but no, his breathing returns to its normal rhythm, the same thirteen breaths a minute, his left hand rests on his heart as if he were listening to the beats, an open ... (show all)note for diastole, a closed note for systole, while the right hand, palm uppermost and fingers slightly curved, seems to be waiting for another hand to clasp it.
Que dirá a vizinhança, perguntou, quando der por que já não estão aqui aqueles que, sem morrer, à morte estavam. - Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)The following day, no one died.
(Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)No dia seguinte ninguém morreu. - Original language
- Portuguese
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
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- General Fiction, Fiction and Literature, Fantasy
- DDC/MDS
- 869.342 — Literature & rhetoric Spanish Literature Literatures of Portuguese and Galician languages Portuguese fiction 20th Century 1945-1999
- LCC
- PQ9281 .A66 .I6813 — Language and Literature French, Italian, Spanish and Portuguese literatures Portuguese literature Individual authors, 1961-2000
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