“The following day, no one died.” Thus begins the novel Death with Interruptions, by Nobel laureate José Saramago. In it, death suspends its services and, for a time, everyone remains alive in an imaginary country. This masterly metaphor conceived by the Portuguese author, already in his final pairs of shoes, serves as the foundation for discussing the dilemmas and conflicts of the end of life.
The world has become quite implausible, but Saramago’s fiction remains just that: fiction. Inevitably, therefore, we must still contemplate death and its implications. For those interested in public policy and urban life, like the readers of this platform, this conversation is unavoidable. It stems from the very idea of anchoring human beings (and whatever remains of us) to a specific place, eternalized and established in burial grounds. We build communities to be close to our ancestors—and, in doing so, to ourselves.
