By: Jose Saramago
An extraordinarily challenging book to read, this novel is translated from the Portuguese. The author is the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. On the first day of the new year in an unnamed country, death ceases to occur and the consequences are predictable (and not), thought-provoking, tragic and humorous. It evolves that death is a being, one of many and in this case concerned with human beings. Gradually death's personality emerges until the tale becomes a love story. Particularly difficult in the first half of the novel, Saramago uses no quotation marks or paragraph indentations and few capitals to indicate different speakers. I sometimes had to tick off the sentences on my hands to follow the dialogue, reading much of the novel twice - and it was absolutely worth it.
Review by Anne. (Fiction) 08/24/09
