Blindness
José Saramago, 1995
Science fiction Contemporary fictionLiterary fiction
A city goes suddenly blind, and ordinary people discover how thin the rules holding them together are. Saramago's unnerving novel asks what remains. A city's sudden blindness turns ordinary routines into a test of decency, and the mood is tense, satirical and grim.
Feels like dread and serenity. About society, morality and freedom.
Who it’s for
You may like it if you enjoy moral fables and novels that examine society under pressure. The long, sparsely punctuated sentences and unrelenting bleakness make it a demanding read, so it helps to have patience for both.
Why read it
A stark, satirical look at how quickly ordinary decency is tested when fear takes over, and why rules matter.
A page from the book
If we weighed every consequence, we would never leave the chair.
If, before every action, we were to begin by weighing up the consequences, thinking about them in earnest, first the immediate consequences, then the probable, then the possible, then the imaginable ones, we should never move beyond the point where our first thought brought us to a halt. The good and evil resulting from our words and deeds go on apportioning themselves, one assumes in a reasonably uniform and balanced way, throughout all the days to follow, including those endless days, when we shall not be here to find out, to congratulate ourselves or ask for pardon, indeed there are those who claim that this is the much talked of immortality. José Saramago.Saramago won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1998, three years after Blindness appeared in Portuguese; he had worked as a car mechanic and translator.
Books that feel like this
Where to get it
Some of these links earn us a small commission, at no cost to you. It keeps BookFeed free.
Questions readers ask
- Is Blindness for me?
- You may like it if you enjoy moral fables and novels that examine society under pressure. The long, sparsely punctuated sentences and unrelenting bleakness make it a demanding read, so it helps to have patience for both.
- What is Blindness like?
- A city's sudden blindness turns ordinary routines into a test of decency, and the mood is tense, satirical and grim. Feels like dread and serenity. About society, morality and freedom.
- What should I read after Blindness?
- If you liked Blindness, try The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), The Plague (Albert Camus) and Lock Every Door (Riley Sager).
A taste of the feed
A question that sounds like flirtation, answered like a vow.
I can feel Peeta press his forehead into my temple and he asks, ‘So now that you’ve got me, what are you going to do with me?’ I turn into him. ‘Put you somewhere you can’t get hurt.
The Hunger Games · Suzanne Collins
The simplest fact can become a capital offense.
There always comes a time in history when the person who dares to say that 2+2=4 is punished by death. And the issue is not what reward or what punishment will be the outcome of that reasoning. The issue is simply whether or not 2+2=4.
The Plague · Albert Camus
The part of poverty that people who haven't lived it miss.
Because here’s the thing about being poor—most people don’t understand it unless they’ve been there themselves. They don’t know what a fragile balancing act it is to stay afloat and that if, God forbid, you momentarily slip underwater, how hard it is to resurface.
Lock Every Door · Riley Sager
Read pages from books like this, one at a time
Keep reading in the feed