Blindness

José Saramago – Portuguese writer and Nobel laureate. His novels are filled with magical realism and read like fairy tales for adults. The zero patient suddenly goes blind while waiting at a traffic light. A compassionate citizen drives him home and steals the car. The next day, the doctor examines the eyes of the blind man and does not understand the cause. A few hours later, white blindness overtakes 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 witness how people lose their human appearance, how dirt will engulf the city, and how a ray of hope will flicker… Moral blindness becomes physical blindness. The author's style – the absence of direct speech, exclamation marks, and question marks – causes the reader to lose familiar landmarks and, in an allegorical sense, immerse themselves in blindness.