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Book Summary and Reviews of Blindness by José Saramago

Blindness by José Saramago

Blindness

A Haunting Literary Horror of Humanity's Survival and Social Breakdown – Nobel Prize Winner

by José Saramago

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  • Published:
  • Oct 1999, 352 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

A stunningly powerful novel of humanity's will to survive against all odds during an epidemic by a winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of our worst appetites and weaknesses—and humanity's ultimately exhilarating spirit.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Another masterpiece." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

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

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

This information about Blindness was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

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More Information

José Saramago (1922–2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.

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