Blindness by Jose Saramago

Description

Vintage, 2013 (paperback, 320 pages)

No food, no water, no government, no obligation, no order. Discover a chillingly powerful and prescient dystopian vision from one of Europe’s greatest writers. A driver waiting at the traffic lights goes blind.

An ophthalmologist tries to diagnose his distinctive white blindness, but is affected before he can read the textbooks. It becomes a contagion, spreading throughout the city. Trying to stem the epidemic, the authorities herd the afflicted into a mental asylum where the wards are terrorised by blind thugs.

And when fire destroys the asylum, the inmates burst forth and the last links with a supposedly civilised society are snapped. This is not anarchy, this is blindness. ‘Saramago repeatedly undertakes to unite the pressing demands of the present with an unfolding vision of the future.