Blindness (Harvest Book) - Softcover

Saramago, José

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0156007754 ISBN 13: 9780156007757

Publisher: Mariner Books, 1999

Synopsis

A stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

"This is a shattering work by a literary master."--The Boston Globe

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers--among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears--through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses--and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit.

About this title

Review:

1998's Nobel Prize winner for Literature, José Saramoga, has, with his astonishing and superb story Blindness, written one of the finest European novels of the last 20 or 30 years. Portugal's best-known writer--but like many Nobel winners hardly a household name in the UK--Saramoga has created a formidable and beautiful body of work deserving (and receiving) the very highest recognition. From the sublime, humanistic The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to the intelligent, metaphysical The Cave, Saramoga challenges, warns, argues but also entertains and enlivens through the truth of his transcendent and highly cultured fictions.

Suddenly, while stopped at a red light in his car, a man goes blind. A "white evil" obliterates his vision plunging him into light as fathomless and impenetrable as the darkest night. A crowd gathers and one man is kind enough to see him home. It is not long, however, before an epidemic of the new blindness causes the government to act in the most authoritarian and fearful of ways, throwing many of the recently disabled into a mental asylum, guarded by scared, trigger-happy soldiers, left to fend for themselves.

While Lord of the Flies might seem an immediately similar reference, Saramaga's work has both more craft and more acuity than William Golding's tale. Blindness is a luminous piece and a wonderful starting point for readers seeking a scrupulous and wise guide to these injudicious and myopic times. --Mark Thwaite

Review:

"This is a shattering work by a literary master."--The Boston Globe

"This is an important book, one that is unafraid to face all of the horrors of the century."--The Washington Post

"Symphonic . . . [There is] a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality that can only honestly be termed wisdom. We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measure."--The New York Times Book Review

"Saramago's surreal allegory explores the ability of the human spirit to prevail in even the most absurdly unjust of conditions, yet he reinvents this familiar struggle with the stylistic eccentricity of a master."--The New Yorker

"Extraordinarily nuanced and evocative . . . This year's most propulsive, and most profound, thriller."--The Village Voice

"Like Jonathan Swift, Saramago uses airily matter-of-fact detail to frame a bitter parable; unlike Swift he pierces the parable with a dart of steely tenderness . . . out of leisurely prose, the ferocity and tenderness shoot suddenly: arrows set alight. . . . Enchanting, sinuous dialogue."--The Los Angeles Times

"Blindness may be as revolutionary in its own way and time as were, say, The Trial and The Plague in theirs. Another masterpiece."--Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0156007754
• ISBN 13: 9780156007757
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 352