Jose Saramago's Blindness is not an easy book to read. Its premise is simple enough - a plague of white blindness is sweeping through an unnamed country. Its victims are taken into quarantine. In the government's panic to react to the plague, the victims are quarantined inside a mental asylum. There they are left to fend for themselves. The asylum quickly becomes overcrowded as more and more victims are placed into quarantine and chaos ensues. Blindness shows the true nature of humankind, both good and bad. And absolutely terrible.

when you're in the mood for something serious. This book makes you think on a deeper level about the true nature of man. It makes you cringe at the horror and smile at the beauty, often simultaneously.

I liked the raw emotion of this novel. It doesn't hold anything back and at times, it was very difficult to continue reading. It is disturbing yet beautiful at the same time.

At first, the book can be difficult to follow. Saramago's style involves very little punctuation, and there are no proper names for characters. For instance, "the doctor's wife," and "the girl with dark glasses," are used instead of names. This can take some time getting used to, but for me, it only took a few pages.

read something lighter. I'm happy to have read this, but at the same time, its graphic descriptions of depravity and violence left me wanting to retreat into something more light-hearted.

Jose Saramago is a Portuguese writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature. Many of his works are allegories of historical events, focusing on the human element. He won the Nobel Prize in 1998 and died in 2010.

I recommend reading this novel because although it has some very difficult scenes, it feels like an important read. I felt I learned something through reading this, and although it shows the potential for evil in humanity, it also gives hope.

It's been some time since I read a contemporary work that offered such insight into the human condition. I continually find myself surprised that Blindness was published in 1992. A shining example of quality contemporary literature, it's easy to see why Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Created Jan 12, 2011 at 8:06am • Submit your own review...