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Summary and Reviews of Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago

Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago

Death with Interruptions

by Jose Saramago
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  • Critics' Consensus (8):
  • First Published:
  • Oct 6, 2008, 256 pages
  • Paperback:
  • Sep 2009, 256 pages
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About This Book

Book Summary

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?

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, became human and were to fall in love?

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Reviews

BookBrowse Review

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... By the time the narrator has finished with her, death has brought the novel around to yet another fabulous terrain. The ending casts the first sentence in an entirely different light, and I closed the book in triumph and delight...continued

Full Review (856 words)

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(Reviewed by Amy Reading).

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Beyond the Book



Death in Literature

Saramago's characterization of death departs from convention in several ways—not least in her insistence in remaining lower case: "I am not Death, but death. Death is something of which you could never even conceive, and please note, mister grammarian, that I did not conclude that phrase with a preposition, you human beings only know the small everyday death that is me, the death which, even in the very worst disasters, is incapable of preventing life from continuing, one day you will find out about Death with a capital D, and at that moment, you will understand the real difference between the relative and the absolute, between full and empty, between still alive and no longer alive…."

Much Western painting ...

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