Synopses & Reviews
From Nobel Prize-winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of loss.
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her charges — among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears — through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.
Review
"This is an important book, one that is unafraid to face all of the horrors of the century." The Washington Post
Review
"Symphonic....[There is] a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality that can only honestly be termed wisdom. We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measure." The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
Portuguese Nobel Laureate José Saramago tells a fantastic tale about a city hit by an epidemic of "white blindness."
About the Author
José Saramago (1922-2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.