Blindness

José Saramago — a Portuguese writer and Nobel Prize laureate. His novels are filled with magical realism and read like fairy tales for adults. The zero patient suddenly goes blind while stopped at a traffic light. A compassionate citizen gives... him a ride home and steals the car. The next day, the doctor examines the blind man's eyes and does not understand the cause. Within a few hours, white blindness strikes the thief, then the doctor, and then everyone who came into contact with them. The pandemic cannot be stopped. Only the doctor's wife does not lose her sight. But this is a curse, not a blessing. She will see how people lose their human appearance, how filth engulfs the city, and how a ray of hope will shine through… Moral blindness becomes physical blindness. The author's style is characterized by the absence of direct speech marks, exclamation points, and question marks, forcing the reader to lose familiar references and, in an allegorical sense, immerse themselves in blindness.