Paperback, 309 pages
English language
Published Aug. 31, 2017 by Vintage Classics.
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 step the epidemic, the authorities her 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.
No food, no water, no government, no order. This is not anarchy, this is blindness.
One can think of COVID-19 as a pandemic of the loss of the sense of smell, what if it was a another sense? Saramago wrote this story. Loved the writing and I couldn't put it down (finished it in two days). Nothing, from what we know about how people, the body or epidemics work, is realistic and it is of course quite cruel to blind people but still a damn good story.
