José Saramago is a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, so I had high expectations for this book, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The story begins with a man finding he is suddenly blind; it follows his story home and the subsequent visit to the ophthalmologist. The next day the doctor and the patients in this surgery are all blind. It implies the blindness is spread through contamination. The group find themselves together in a disused mental asylum, although the real reason behind the blindness is never discovered. Instead, the story follows the lives of these blind people as they come to terms with their circumstances and learn to adapt. It is a story about how they manage to survive as the blindness spreads amongst the population.  

Only one person is not struck down by the blindness and this is the doctor’s wife. She is a very clever woman, instrumental in the very survival of this group of people.  Wisely, she had the foresight to decide that she would rather go with her husband and pretend blindness, than stay behind, become blind and be separated. The doctor’s wife provides the eyes, for the reader to understand the world around the blind people: the devastation, filth, hunger, death, and degeneration. It is a fascinating story, examining exactly what could happen if a whole population went blind, and there are some harrowing narratives in the story of true human suffering.

There are many parallels in this book to the Covid pandemic and this made the story even more interesting, relevant, and relatable. The removal of contaminated people, to disused buildings to contain the spread, were particularly reminiscent of videos on social media of Chinese citizens being forcefully removed from their homes. Thankfully the Covid virus did not affect everyone as seriously or universally as the blindness in this story, and the consequences were not as severe as the disintegration of society experienced in Blindness.  

The writing is brilliant and unique. There are no names, only descriptions: the man with the eye patch, the boy with the squint, the doctor, for example.  There are no speech marks. But the story is still engaging and reads fluidly. This story showed the best and worst of people during a crisis: how some people will naturally gravitate towards goodwill and how others, will exploit the situation to their maximum advantage.  It is a story of the human spirit, hope, perseverance, and ultimately survival at any cost.