Blindness

Apparently José Saramago, the author of this novel, won the Nobel prize in 1998. He’s Portuguese; I’d never heard of him. This was a good book, though. It’s like an allegory, a story where none of the characters have names. It’s very reminiscent of Kant (in fact there’s a line which is a direct reference, I’m sure, to The Trial) and it reminds me of other German writers, especially the style – no paragraphs, lots of commas, and embedded speech. It’s conversational, like you’re being told the story, but you never even notice the narrator. It draws you in, it’s intimate, without being entirely real.

A man goes blind one day. Then his doctor, his wife, a man who stole from him; it’s an epidemic. Those who are blind are herded into a disused mental hospital and if they try to leave, they’re shot. The packed mental hospital descends into chaos; a bunch of men take control of the food and force the rest to give them their possessions and then rape the women. But one woman can see. She kills one of the blind men, sets fire to the hospital, and then escapes with her husband and some others – because by then the whole country is blind, those guarding the hospital too. They forage their way through the city, which has also descended into chaos. Everything is just filthy, anything edible is food. There is no organisation any longer, there’s just nonsense.

Lots of big ideas here – how quickly society and civilisation break down, that blindness is simply not seeing, that books unread are invisible, that people may as well be nameless – no great speeches, just some good lines and the overall impression of chaotic filth. It’s a pretty amazing read altogether, leaving a strong impression behind.