Death at Intervals, Jose Saramago

It was when I realized that it gets more and more difficult to choose a book from the bookstores when the idea of Literary Agenda was born. Too much emphasis on the cover, on all those “A brilliant masterpiece, says Famous Newspaper” bling-bling paragraphs on the front cover, back cover, first pages, everywhere.

After I felt in several ‘compelling’ traps and paid some good money on disco-books (I’m not saying that books are expensive, just that I paid too much for some products that did not satisfy my expectations), I decided it must be me. I am not in touch with the latest literary news.

Literary Agenda is still in its early days, but it did help me slalom through the new releases and chose better.

It makes me happy to find out that Jose Saramago gives us a new novel, Death at Intervals besides all the news about fake memoirs, Rowling being on trial for the Potter Lexicon, or that an unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise, a bestseller in US has problems hitting the British market. Such a pity.

It doesn’t come as a complete novelty that  Saramago deprives his characters of a vital function. After an pandemic of blindness that spreads all over the society and brings chaos [Blindness], Saramago goes further in his new novel and takes from humans the right to die. Nobody, in the unnamed country dies anymore.

The discovery that death is still a possibility in a neighbouring country gives rise to nocturnal border-crossings. Language ceases to fulfill its descriptive function: “New Year, New Life” is hardly appropriate on 1 January, when death itself has died. [The Independent]

Having concluded that simply snatching mortals away without warning is not only cruel but also leaves a lot of loose ends, she begins to send little violet warning letters. The population’s reaction is predictably hysterical and the handwriting analyst contracted to examine the letters concludes, brilliantly, that death has the handwriting of a serial killer. [The Guardian]