num_pages: 238
description: 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 mass 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 homefamilies 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?
language: English
title: Death with Interruptions
publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt