Blindness / Jose Saramago ; translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero.

Jose Saramago was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1998.

This really is an amazing novel. It is a very unusual story, wonderfully written, and has lots to think about. It does have some disturbing content and I usually avoid reading material of this type, but it wasnâÂÂt beyond my comfort level. The events and people of the novel are described in a matter-of-fact, rather than a sensationalized or grotesque, way. This makes the story easier to read, but also creepier, as though it is all really happening. Making us disoriented or âÂÂblind,â there are no dialogue quotations so we donâÂÂt always know who is speaking (although easy enough to figure it out), and the characters have no names.

The book is about a blindness epidemic and how society and individuals behave in reaction to the crisis. At the beginning of the book, a man who is driving his car suddenly becomes blind. Someone offers to drive him home and this man becomes blind, then the ophthalmologist who is consulted by the first blind man is blinded, and so on in a domino effect. People continue to become blind by associating with a blind person. The only person spared from blindness is the ophthalmologistâÂÂs wife. She pretends she is blind, initially in order to accompany and care for her husband, then is drawn into the lives of others.

The novel follows the first few people who become blind. They are quarantined in a hospital, including the eye doctor and his seeing wife, and are prevented by armed guards from leaving. There is no seeing staff to help them. Soon the hospital is completely occupied to overflowing, the food supply becomes sporadic, the plumbing stops working and a soldier kills a blind person. Conditions rapidly deteriorate. An individual in one ward of the hospital discloses that he has a gun and begins to control the food supply. In one of the most disturbing segments of the book, he and his group demand that women from other wards âÂÂvisitâ them, otherwise no food would be allowed in. Not to have spoilers, but the story continues with unexpected developments, the courageous behavior of individuals and a surprising end to the novel.

The book is well worth reading for its messages of tolerance, humanity and hope in the face of disaster.

A portion of the Booklist Review: Less an allegory than a mature writer's inspired characterization of human nature... As in Golding's Lord of the Flies, a hierarchy of terror arises behind closed doors as more blind arrive. They hoard and share, love and rape, fight and heal. Saramago's novel deftly shows how vulnerable humans are, how connected and how blind.