Imagine waking up one morning and having to submerse yourself in the realization that no one as died since the start of the new year, but only in your sole country. You may first postulate where this story may take you and find it to be completely off, but you will feel Jose Saramagos use of vocabulary truly intoxicating; longing for your eyes to flitter their way across the next page to indulge your senses for yet another remarkable experience.

People may see death as just a symbolic steal fist that holds on to the hearts and the fears of millions, a finish line that they crave to reach to receive their final grand prize of this test of life. In this story though it takes from the long imaginative being of the grim reaper and her scythe. You surprised I said her? Well in this book for every one “normalcy” you get a handful of unique instances, such as the specificness of death's gender. Death, as thought by many, as all the control, but the way the author goes about explaining her shows gradually that even death has her own feelings and longings, that she too can be overcome by.

Religious beliefs, politics, and government are all affected by this new found phenomenon in surprisingly negative ways that will introduce you to whole new views of death that'll gnaw at your soul forever. There's also some complications with the rest of the world because only America as this unheard of instance. So just like any other delicacy everyone wants it and wants to be part of it, but they don't put up nearly the fight that the maphia does. The maphia is a group of people that are the complete opposite of those who are fighting to get into the country; they are the ones trying to sustain a balance by any means necessary where they can bring the people who are at the brink of dieing, but can't, past the country's border so they can finally pass on.

This may be by verbal request by the individual or by a families lack of care. time, or emotional stability it takes to care of their loved ones. This is brought on because where as before you could put your family members in a type of facility or hospital that has their arms wide open are now trying to close their once generous arms for there is an abundance of people but lack of supplies, space, and staff. The government who tries to stop them, ends up having their men beat to the very last inch of their life. So instead of causing more comatose state victims they end up coming to some sort of agreement with the maphia. Then the government takes the only power they have left and uses the media to hopefully persuade the populaces feelings to not let their families members go with them.

After you set your mentality in the state of this new era, you get switched backed to the older times with brief modifications. Death with a lower case d writes and send letters to people who are gong to die in a weeks advance to let them have time to say their goodbyes, write their wills etc. All letters are sent without the capability of being sent back or be some how taken away from the receiver until the recipient reads the letter. Death ends up running into a complication which inevitably for me ties the whole book together. It's a satisfying ending that will keep your thoughts going even after you have completed this enthralling piece of literature.