Book details
Blindness
by José Saramago
1995
About the book
A sudden epidemic of "white blindness" strikes an unnamed city, leaving victims submerged in a milky void. The government reacts by interning the first infected citizens in a filthy, overcrowded asylum under armed guard. Among them is a doctor’s wife who feigns blindness to accompany her husband. Inside, social structures collapse into a hierarchy governed by hunger and physical intimidation. As the disease spreads to the entire population, the interned group escapes into a ruined city where basic survival replaces moral law and the lack of sight reveals the fragility of modern civilization.
Readers of bleak psychological fiction choose this work to observe how human ethics function when the visual facade of society disappears. It attracts those interested in the thin line between cooperation and predatory behavior under extreme scarcity. The reader finishes the book with a visceral understanding of how physical needs dictate social order and how quickly empathy can be discarded. It provides a stark look at the dependency of the individual on a functioning infrastructure and the resilience required to maintain dignity in total isolation.
Details
- Published
- 1995
- Language
- EN