Death with Interruptions by José Saramago

IT MAY BE THAT A VERY GENTEEL UPBRINGING, OF THE KIND that is becoming increasingly rare, along, perhaps, with the almost superstitious respect that the written word can instill into certain timid souls, has prevented readers, although they are more than justified in showing signs of ill-contained impatience, from interrupting this long digression and demanding to be told what death has been up to since the fateful night when she announced her return.

Now given the important role that the eventide homes, the hospitals, the insurance companies, the maphia and the catholic church played in these extraordinary events, it seemed only fitting to explain in fulsome detail how they reacted to this sudden and dramatic turn of events, but unless, of course, death, taking into account the enormous numbers of corpses that would have to be buried in the hours immediately following her announcement, had decided, in an unexpected and praiseworthy gesture of sympathy, to prolong her absence for a few more days in order to give life time to return to its old axis other, newly dead people, that is, those who died during the first few days of the restoration of the old regime would have been forced to join the unfortunates who had, for months, been hovering between here and there, and then, as is only logical, we would have been obliged to speak of those new deaths too. However, that is not what happened, Death was not so generous.