One of the novels José Saramago wrote before his death in 2010 was a simple book titled, Death With Interruptions. Saramago tends to write novels that develop an often outlandish idea, examining it from all sides and watching where it leads. In Blindness, everyone went blind; in Death With Interruptions, no one dies. But to emphasize that the author is exploring a theme in his book, the absence of death is only in the one unnamed country:  take a dying person to the border and instantaneously they die as they enter the adjacent country. According to the novel, the near-dead are moved across the border-line feet first so they will gradual experience their death.

Continue reading “Typical Saramago?” →