Death at Intervals

Imagine this following scenario:

On the first day of the new year, No one dies...

From that day on, your given city no longer produces any dead person, even if he or she has been involved in the most fatal accident or diagnosed with the most lethal disease...

Death has cease to exist...no one will die...

Can you imagine what would happen to a city or a country if that's the case??

Well, that's what the Nobel Prize winning novelist Jose Saramago tried to capture in his latest novel DEATH AT INTERVALS. Like his earlier and immensely successful effort, Blindness (which is already adapted to the screen by the great Brazilian filmmaker Fernando Meirelles and in competition this year at Cannes), DEATH is another great attempt in the satirical portrayal of human nature in the face of some unknown yet serious collective calamity.

Here with DEATH, Saramago tried to capture the confusion, and simultaneously, the excitement of the public when death cease to happen to everyone in the society. How would the governement react? What would happen to funeral directors, hospitals, social services and pensions? And in such time of great social changes, some sectors in the society will fall but other will rise to the occasion, and in this dark and funny fable, we will find that the mafia can be of important help.

I actually finished this book a month or so ago, but numerous scenes and details have always find its way back to me. I don't want to give any of its plot away, but towards the last 1/3 of the book, you will find the story about Death, the almighty undertaker, saddening and touching enough for you to sympathize with her, even though being aware that when our time comes, we will only be too fearful to come face to face with her...

I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading satirical pieces that tell us more about our condition as human being, our selfishness and ignorance. But if you haven't read a Saramago novel before, Blindness might be a better one to start off with. Better read it before the film comes out though, the novel is always better than the film...

D....