Blindness

Blindness by Jose Saramago, winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature, is definitely worth a read. A story about an epidemic of sudden blindness that sweeps through a city, and how some of the blind patients are whisked away for quarantine in an isolated facility -- a run-down mental hospital -- where they are left to fend on their own. Only limited food and water are provided for them each day. There is no provision of any medical supplies. Military troops stand guard outside, with orders to gun down any blind person attempting to flee the installation. Under those circumstances, the blind attempt to organise themselves into some semblance of civilised society, but turf-fighting begins to form. Those staying in the different wards start to compete for the same limited rations that are left in the main corridor outside the wards. Over the course of the next few days, some of them get injured, some starve, some catch fevers, some try in vain to escape, some die from infected wounds, some get shot by spooked soldiers, some trip over the dead, and one blind thug gets a pair of scissors pierced into his throat as he forces a blind woman to have sex with him in exchange for food. A rather bleak portrayal of the human condition, and how quickly it degenerates.

The language structure of the book further adds to the overall theme of the story - a confusing blindness. Peppered with commas, a single sentence can run up to half a page, and a single paragraph can run for pages, and when different people speak, their words flow in a single stream of text, so the reader is left to figure out who said what and when. And none of the characters have a name.

I rate it 3.5/5.