Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

ALTHOUGH IT HAD IMMEDIATELY BEEN RIDICULED BY RIVAL newspapers, which had managed to draw on the inspiration of their principal writers for the most diverse and meaty of headlines, some dramatic, some lyrical and others almost philosophical or mystical, if not touchingly ingenuous, as was the case with the popular newspaper that contented itself with And What Will Become Of Us Now, ending the phrase with the graphical flourish of an enormous question mark, the aforementioned headline New Year, New Life, for all its grating banality, had struck a real chord with some people who, for reasons either of nature or nurture, preferred the solidity of a more or less pragmatic optimism, even if they had reasons to suspect that it might be merely a vain illusion.

Having lived, until those days of confusion, in what they had imagined to be the best of all possible and probable worlds, they were discovering, with delight, that the best, the absolute best, was happening right now, right there, at the door of their house, a unique and marvelous life without the daily fear of parca's creaking scissors, immortality in the land that gave us our being, safe from any metaphysical awkwardnesses and free to everyone, with no sealed orders to open at the hour of our death, announcing at that crossroads where dear companions in this vale of tears known as earth were forced to part and set off for their different destinations in the next world, you to paradise, you to purgatory, you down to hell.