Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Blindness - Jose Saramago

A city is struck by a mysterious white blindness which spreads like lightening striking everyone blind except one. The blind are initially quarantined by the ones who can still see until the day when everyone turns blind and there is no one to maintain the quarantine. This great novel by nobel prize winner author, Jose Saramago, is a wonderful attempt at understanding how human emotions and values are influenced when faced with a situation where one is completely helpless and has no one to help him either.

Unknown to any body in the first group of quarantined patients, there is a woman who can still see. It is interesting to note that she is the one who is suffering the most since she is able to see all the misery around her. The unhygienic and pathetic living conditions hardly affect those who cannot see it. They are mostly concerned with being able to eat their daily meals with nothing left to look forward to. The irregular meal services and addition of new blind people to the quarantine keeps things interesting for them until one day a group of blind men organise themselves into a gang which hoards all the meals delivered from outside and make the interns pay for their food - in kind and in flesh.

The levels of degradation, to which the people are subject to - morally and physically - are completely unimaginable. This is the first book I've read by this author and I found him very readable with a very interesting and imaginative style of writing.