Blindness josé saramago6/27/2023 ![]() She, as the novel makes very clear, is the one who saves the day. Yet the ‘secret weapon’ that one group of ‘good’ internees have is a woman who surreptitiously joined them and who did not in fact lose her sight. Panicked, the government throws the affected into a disused asylum where gang warfare breaks out a la Lord of the Flies with one group of internees hoarding the food and holding the remaining internees to ransom first for their possessions and then for their women. The novel concerns ‘the white evil’ a highly contagious pandemic that causes people to go blind and see nothing but whiteness. Well yes apparently since with a mild expletive of amazement I discovered that the Donmar Warehouse were planning to transform the work into a sound installation. Indeed, early on in March I had found myself thinking of Saramago’s dystopian fable and thinking ‘Oh god, do I have to read it again?’. It may have been written 23 years ago, but few works bar possibly Camus’ The Plague seem more immediately relevant in a world of Covid-19 lockdown. Heard the one about the pandemic and about the bumbling, incompetent governments misguided reaction? Whatever one’s feelings about José Saramago’s dystopian nightmare Blindness, you have to acknowledge its staying power. ![]() Book cover of Blindness by Portuguese author José Saramago. ![]()
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