First edition
Condition: Near fine, dust jacket has very light edge creases. Hardback.
Publishing Info: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, 2006
ISBN: 9780151012749
Translated by Translated by Margaret Jull Costa.
On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, of course, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, morticians, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially a mass celebration. Flags are hung out on balconies; people dance in the streets. They have achieved the great goal of humanity: eternal life. Then reality hits home families are left to care for the permanently dying; life-insurance policies become meaningless; and funeral parlors are reduced to arranging burials for pet dogs, cats, hamsters, and parrots.
Death sits in her chilly apartment, where she lives alone with scythe and filing cabinets and contemplates her experiment: What if no one ever died again? What if she, death with a small "d," became human and were to fall in love?
Jose Saramago biogrpahy on Wikipedia
