Saramago’s distinctive blurring of grammatical boundaries takes some getting used to: words are spoken by unidentified speakers, sentences go on for paragraphs, paragraphs go on for pages. As the white fog overpowers its victims, the lack of familiar sentence structure overwhelms the reader. The experience was eye-opening.īlindness describes a world in which citizens of an unnamed city are suddenly and without warning unable to see. For two weeks this spring, these reports of death and despair were broken only by Saramago’s fictional pandemic. I am immersed in apocalyptic prose when I read the daily news. I hesitate to recommend Blindness because we don’t need to imagine Saramago’s fictional epidemic-induced fear. It’s not that the text isn’t beautifully written nor that the storyline isn’t captivating. Blindness by José Saramago –winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature– is not that book. When choosing a novel to read during an enforced lockdown, I found myself craving something light and heart-warming.
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