Blindness

José Saramago's novel Blindness presents a powerful vision of the human spirit. In this parable, an epidemic of white blindness spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental institution, but criminals hold everyone captive and steal food rations. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare—a woman who guides her charges 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.