What if no one died?

Can you imagine living in a country where one day, out of the blue, people simply stopped dying?

Would you initially think that was a good thing? That you'd never have to say goodbye to your loved ones? And that you, yourself, could look forward to eternal life?

But what if the reality of that set in and you began contemplating other scenarios: How would morticians, gravediggers and coffin-makers earn a living? What would you do with a worthless life insurance policy? As the population aged, leaving a diminishing cohort of younger workers, how would the government meet the financial and health care needs of its people? How would the church justify itself in the absence of the hereafter?

What if you reached the point of desperation where the burden of caring for near-dead relatives who simply did not expire became too much? Could you imagine the criminal element offering -- for a price, of course -- to transport those sickly relatives across the border and disposing of them in an adjoining country, where people continued to die? Would you be surprised at the pushback from that neighboring country?

These are among the many provocative questions raised in José Saramago's new book, "Death With Interruptions."

I picked it up on a whim at a local bookstore, having read -- and loved -- his book "The Double," which is about the complications that ensue when a divorced, depressed school teacher spots his exact double on a video and decide to pursue him.

Saramago, if you don't know him, is a Portuguese novelist who was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998. The New York Times Magazine profiled him in 2007 in a piece called "The Unexpected Fantasist," noting that he's an atheist and a hard-line member of his country's Communist Party. His work has been compared to that of fellow Nobel laureate Gabriel Garcia Marquez.

Saramago, 87 years old, is prone to extraordinarily long sentences that go on and on because he routinely uses commas in place of periods and favors lower-case instead of upper-case for proper names. Once you get used to him, though, you appreciate his brilliance.

If you're creeped out by my brief description above, it's best to move on and read something else. If, on the other hand, you're intrigued by the moral questions raised by such a scenario, this book (238 pages) might be worth your time. Without giving anything away, I can tell you a patient reader will be rewarded as the second half of the book develops, wherein death (Death with a small "d") takes on the human form of a female and confronts her own thoughts and feelings on fate, death and love.