Death with Interruptions

Death with Interruptions is the 2005 speculative fiction novel written by Portuguese author Jose Saramago. Published in Britain as Death at Intervals, the abstract and allegorical story revolves around death as an incident as well as a female character that can express herself and change form. One of the central themes of the novel is how society relates to death in both ways, and how death interacts with the people she is meant to execute. The style of the novel largely ignores traditional rules of grammar, disuses punctuation in most sentences and quotations for speech, and reads more as a stream of consciousness. On the first day of the New Year, no one dies. While many celebrate overcoming humanity’s longtime foe, others whose livelihoods depend on death express concern. Among the latter include churches, religious leaders, politicians, doctors, coroners and the like. As death sits alone pondering her wicked experiment, she wonders if she’s done humanity a favor or not. In 1998, Saramago won the Nobel Prize for Literature. According to The Chicago Tribune, “Saramago is arguably the greatest writer of our time.”

Narrated in the third-person omniscient perspective, the story begins in an unnamed, landlocked country in an unspecified time in the past. On January 1st of a new year, death has been declared dead, which means nobody in the country can die anymore. At first, most of the population rejoices over the news of their newfound immortality. However, many others in the country with professions reliant on death begin to panic. The so-called authorities in this arena--clergymen, theologians and philosophers--all look into the matter but cannot provide answers as to why people can no longer die. The Catholic Church in particular fears they will soon go out of business, as the end of death would render their services obsolete. The death and rebirth of Christ would no longer be relevant to anyone.

Following an initial period of celebration, for the first six months of the year, the country spirals into chaos despite humanity overcoming its most enduring nemesis. Hospitals and healthcare workers begin to fear the end of death will not put them out of business like the churches, but will actually increase their workloads so much that they cannot sustain themselves. Caretaking units, nursing homes and infirmaries are bound to be occupied for all of eternity. On the other hand, funeral parlors and morticians fear they will no longer be needed and will go out of business, or at the very least, be forced to prepare funerals for dead animals instead of humans. As a response, an underground sect known as the Maphia comes up with ways of killing people and relieving family members of seeing loved ones suffer forever. The Maphia figures out that the ceasing of death only occurs in their country, so in order to kill the sickest and most infirmed people, they are simply taken across the border where death is still alive. This practice soon becomes a cottage industry in which the government participates and becomes obligated to work with the Maphia. More unrest and near war escalates between neighbors of the two countries.



Not long after, death reappears. At first, death sat back in her apartment, maintaining the visage of a skull and skeleton, as she watched her experiment unfold. When she returns however, death takes the form of a young woman. She begins to experience life, attending concerts and shopping for clothes. She is referred to as death with a lowercase “d” to differentiate her as one who kills people, as opposed to Death with a capital “D” who kills the entire Universe. When death declares through the media that she has ended her experiment and people will begin dying again, she proposes a new method of handling the news. To everyone set to die, death sends letters in violet-colored envelopes warning them that they have one week to prepare for the end of their life. This is meant to be a more humane form of killing people. However, this creates a backlash in the community, as ordinary people will not only die again, they must now reckon with their impending death and the anticipatory dread it causes. Conversely, death’s return behooves the funeral directors and religious figures that depend on life ending to make a living.

When death sends a death letter to a nondescript cellist, she is shocked to learn that he will not perish. Each time death sends him a letter, the cellist returns it without being physically harmed. For whatever reason, death soon learns that a glitch has caused the cellist to never die. Obsessed with the case, death goes to meet the cellist in order to personally deliver the letter to him. While initially interested in learning why he can’t die, death begins to fall in love with the cellist. As her feelings grow stronger for the cellist, death becomes more humanlike. The novel ends in circular fashion, as the narrator states no one dies the following day.

Saramago wrote more than 30 novels over the course of his long writing career. More than two million of his books have solely been sold in Portugal, and his work has been translated in over 25 languages. In addition to Death with Interruptions, some of his most notable work includes Land of Sin, Skylight, This World and the Other, The Traveller’s Baggage, The Notes, The Lives of Thins, Journey to Portugal, The Stone Raft, Blindness, All the Names, The Cave, The Double, Small Memories, The Elephant’s Journey, Cain, and many more. In addition to the Nobel Prize in Literature, Saramago received numerous awards, including the 1995 Camões Prize, 2004 America Award, and 2009 Sao Paulo Prize for Literature. Following a long battle with leukemia, Saramago passed away in 2010.