Blindness

Blindness tells of an epidemic where the world sees white. The result is a societal dystopia, first in quarantine and then in a world of the blind. Food is scarce, filth is everywhere, and any small injury could be fatal.

José Saramago was one of a kind, a unique storyteller and gifted artist who always had something to say, and always said it with such a brilliant prose, translated with equal skill by his two main translators. This is among his best books, an example of how he can make the societal personal, and can make even a very unlikely story seem deeply real and troubling.

One can think of COVID-19 as a pandemic of the loss of the sense of smell, what if it was a another sense? Saramago wrote this story. Loved the writing and I couldn't put it down (finished it in two days). Nothing, from what we know about how people, the body or epidemics work, is realistic and it is of course quite cruel to blind people but still a damn good story.