José Saramago

"On the first day of the new year, no one dies. This, understandably, causes consternation among politicians, religious leaders, funeral directors, and doctors. Among the general public, on the other hand, there is initially 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...

During the town elections of a nameless city, most of its inhabitants, by their own individual choices, decide to exert their voting rights in an unexpected way. The dirty and sneaky officials in power start making arrangements to eliminate the guilty parties; and if they cannot find any, they will have to make them up.

A "winkingly blasphemous retelling of the Old Testament" by the Nobel Prize-winning author of The Gospel According the Jesus Christ (The New Yorker).
In José Saramago final novel, he daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament. Placing the despised murderer Cain in the role of protagonist, this epic tale ranges from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten

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Adam Bell, a glum, disheveled history professor who seems disinterested even in his beautiful girlfriend Mary. Watching a movie on the recommendation of a colleague, Adam spots his double; a bit-part actor named Anthony St. Clair, and decides to track him down. The identical men meet and their lives become bizarrely and irrevocably intertwined.