Death disappears and then returns to send out letters in violet stationery
The following day, no one died.” That is the sentence with which Jose Saramago begins and ends his new novel, Death at Intervals, which in form and content is of a piece with much of his earlier work. That is to say, he poses a philosophical question in terms of an allegorical event; then, step by step, works out its effects on the citizens of an unspecified country. In the process, leaving himself with plenty of room to show up the nature of vested interests, be they conservative, religious or bureaucratic.

In this slender novel (felicitously translated from the Portuguese by Margaret Jull Costa), Saramago speculates on what would happen if, for a period of time, no one was to die. In what can be read as a witty turning-on-its-head of the religious Doctrine of Eternal Life, he shows us the consequences of this deathless state on the country’s population — which grows from baffled to desperate — and how the church, government officials, undertakers and even the underworld react to and then try to cash in on the situation.

The trick to making fables even more resonant is, of course, to treat events with utmost seriousness, and Saramago does this here by going into details of how hospitals and old-age homes, among other institutions, deal with the predicament. Patriotic fervour plays a role too, with people ferrying the aged and the unfit across the border, where the laws of death remain unaltered.

... contd.