Summary of "Blindness"

Suddenly a man loses his sight. This happens while he is waiting in his car at the traffic lights. He can see only whiteness. When the blind man's wife takes him to the ophthalmologist to have his eyes checked, the eye doctor cannot find anything psysically wrong with them. A few hours later the ophthalmologist also loses his sight, as does he first blind man's wife. The white blindness is turning into an epidemic.

The government realises that it has to do something about this highly contagious blindness. All the blind people are interned in a lunatic asylum guarded by the military. The government will supply food for the internees and some cleaning equipment, but nothing else. Those who try to escape will be shot, and should anyone get hurt or sick there will be no intervention.

The lunatic asylum becomes an isolated society with its own rules, where no one of the internees can see, except for one woman. She is the only one who has not been struck by the mysterious blindness, and this gives her a big advantage when the situation in time gets worse.

This is a very good story about how a sudden blindness finally makes a whole society collapse. Inside the asylum the relationships between the people are quite complex. It is an interesting mix of people trapped inside the walls of the asylum, and there are some people who try to take advantage of the situation.

Saramago's writing style makes this novel quite difficult to read. He doesn't use much punctuation, so the sentences can be very long. Sometimes longer than one page. In dialogues he uses comma and capital letter when the other person starts talking. If you don't have a problem with Saramago's way of writing, then I am sure that you will like this novel.

Book Summaries

Fiction
Health
Psychology
Biography
Awards

Book Awards

Man Booker Prize
Nobel Prize
Pulitzer Prize