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I’ve always loved historic house museums, loved peering beyond the velvet rope into a Victorian bedroom or a colonial kitchen and imagining the ghosts that wore those dresses, or worked the handle of that butter churn, or laid the fire in that grate... 

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Blindness

by Jose Saramago, Giovanni Pontiero
Blindness

  • Comment on this title
  • Synopses & Reviews
  • Award Excerpt

ISBN13: 9780156007757
ISBN10: 0156007754
Condition: Standard


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Awards

Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

From Powells.com

25 Books to Read Before You Die: World Edition

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Staff Pick

A devastating and often horrific look at societal breakdown, Blindness is one of the most acclaimed novels from José Saramago, Portugal's only Nobel laureate for literature. Far more than a mere dystopian plague novel, Blindness is a metaphorical account of society's basest tendencies in the face of catastrophe. Saramago's magnificently wending sentences and trademark style lend grace and beauty to an otherwise gruesome tale of epidemic chaos. Recommended By Jeremy G., Powells.com

Synopses & Reviews

Publisher Comments

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers — among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears — through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation and a vivid evocation of the horrors of the twentieth century, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of man's worst appetites and weaknesses — and man's ultimately exhilarating spirit. The stunningly powerful novel of man's will to survive against all odds, by the winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature.

Review

"Beautifully written in a concise, haunting prose...this unsettling, highly original work is essential reading." Library Journal

Review

"Saramago's Blindness is the best novel I've read since Gabriel Garcia Marquez' Love in the Time of Cholera. It is a novel of enormous skill and authority....Like all great books it is simultaneously contemporary and timeless, and ambitiously confronts the human condition without a false note struck anywhere. Saramago is one of the great writers of our time, and Blindness, ironically is the product of his extraordinary vision." David Guterson, author of Snow Falling on Cedars

Review

"Blindness may be as revolutionary in its own way and time as were, say, The Trial and The Plague were in theirs. Another masterpiece." Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Review

"Saramago writes phantasmagoria — in the midst of the most astonishing fantasy he has a meticulous sense of detail. It's very eloquent stuff." Harold Bloom, author of The Western Canon

Review

"It is the voice of Blindness that gives it its charm. By turns ironic, humorous and frank, there is a kind of wink of humor between author and reader that is perfectly imbued with fury at the excesses of the current century. Blindness reminds me of Kafka roaring with laughter as he read his stories to his friends....Blindness' impact carries the force of an author whose sensibility is significant." The Washington Post

Review

"Blindness is a shattering work by a literary master." The Boston Globe

Review

"More frightening than Stephen King, as unrelenting as a bad dream, José Saramago's Blindness politely rubs our faces in apocalypse....A metaphor like 'white blindness' might easily seem forced or labored, but Saramago makes it live by focusing on the stubbornly literal; his account of a clump of newly blind people trying to find their way to food or to the bathroom provides some surprisingly gripping passages. While this epidemic has a clear symbolic burden, it's also a real and very inconvenient affliction." Salon

Synopsis

In Blindness, a city is overcome by an epidemic of blindness that spares only one woman. She becomes a guide for a group of seven strangers and serves as the eyes and ears for the reader in this profound parable of loss and disorientation. We return to the city years later in Saramagos Seeing, a satirical commentary on government in general and democracy in particular. Together here for the first time, this beautiful edition will be a welcome addition to the library of any Saramago fan.

About the Author

José Saramago (1922-2010) was the author of many novels, among them Blindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda, and The Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis. In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

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What Our Readers Are Saying

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Average customer rating 4.4 (13 comments)

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slsteckler , May 31, 2014 (view all comments by slsteckler)
When I first started to read this novel, I had a hard time getting into the writing structure. There just seemed to be a lot of adjectives, I didn’t know who was talking and there were no quotation marks around speech, things that I wasn’t sure I could handle for 326 pages but after getting into the story, I couldn’t put it down. The story reminds me of the 2005 Superdome incident with Hurricane Katrina only this book was written in 1995, both had major incidents where the government intervened yet were so unprepared and about how some people acted. To have the ophthalmologist’s wife hide among all the infected individuals witnessing what was happening and to keep quiet about it, I don’t know how she did it or how she stayed well so long. They had that gang mentality, to stay alive and stay together which I started to feel and gather within myself and I wanted them to succeed. Some of the book wasn’t pleasant but if you think about what they thought they were up against, it was a hard life they were living. A beautiful scene was when the three naked women were out washing clothes on the balcony during the rain storm. Exposed to the world, these women cried as they washed clothes, each woman uttering adjectives describing the other women as they washed - very emotional and powerful scene. It really was a moving book and put things into perspective for me.

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lukas , April 13, 2014 (view all comments by lukas)
I've read a few books by the late Portuguese Nobel winner Jose Saramago, but this is by far the best. He's sometimes described as a fabulist and compared to Calvino, Eco and Murakami. This novel, about an unnamed city, struck by a plague of blindness, feels something like J.G. Ballard rewriting Camus's "The Plague." It is both a powerful, resonant allegory and a visceral novel about regular people in extraordinary circumstances. It was made into a film several years ago. Followed by "Seeing."

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nsm2792 , January 19, 2012
It is a good book because it opens your mind through ideas and make you think about them.This book learns you to look positive to everything so your life become better.It's true that we are not living in a paradise but understanding that why some people or you are doing something wrong will make your world like paradise. With this book I understand that our looking and our judgments make our world worse and worse consequently we can make it better ourselves by looking good,thinking good and judging good.

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ladymacbech , January 09, 2012 (view all comments by ladymacbech)
"Blindness," by Jose Saramago, can cross cultures, and was an amazing "personal" experience. A most different concept with printed material. I found this book hard (emotionally) to read, but harder (mentally and physically) to put down. I read it back-to-back twice. It wasn't difficult to not imagine all the characters "alive" and identify with the experiences of blindness and a society-out-of-balance. I suppose this could possibly happen physically, but it certainly does in the mind, and in alternate realities in society at large. There's no need to close ones eyes, just look around. This was an amazing "read."

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Zenfrenzy , January 08, 2011
The scales fell from my eyes. Amazing look at the fragility of our modern existence.

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krken2000 , January 04, 2011
I loved this book as it was a page turner, quick read. Written by a Nobel Prize winner, Blindness focuses on the vulnerability of man in a time of crisis. Would chaos rule if an epidemic of blindness were to happen? Yes according to Saramago. I tend to think we would help rather than harm each other. Regardless, I was spellbound by the intense action and unique characters that had to bond rather quickly in order to survive this harrowing nightmarish existence. I recommend. It is also available on DVD as a motion picture released in 2008. kk

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Catherine Malcolm , July 14, 2009 (view all comments by Catherine Malcolm)
Haunting...I hope to read this allegory again. Shattering morality tale format.This story reminded me of Lord of the Flies,but takes place in the present.A pandemic of contagious white blindness leads the first people to be identified to be quarantined in a filthy, abandoned insane asylum seemingly forever.As the holding tank fills,the more insane and hellishly degrading the situation becomes.Not for the feint of heart! The story descends into barbarism, violence (including from the military caretakers),paranoia, and starvation. The initial 7 internees (the 7th is a seer) make a ramshackle escape to reveal a new set of challenges and hopes. Not to be missed! Fascinating.

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Katherine Adams , January 07, 2009 (view all comments by Katherine Adams)
Perhaps I've watched too many "Twilight Zone" marathons. Perhaps I just like consistent punctuation. I definitely don't need the author to hit me over the head with the obvious problems (particularly physical situations involving the bowels) that a sudden and unexplained blindness epidemic would unleash on the public. Whatever the case, I'm curious why this particular novel received such acclaim. The plot is certainly unique in that only one character is unaffected by the "plague," and a lot of the prose is terrific. My time wasn't wasted readng the book; I just expected quite a bit more from such a respected author, and the novel that received so many awards. This is one of those times I'll probably see the movie; perhaps it will help me envision the book differently in retrospect.

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Shoshana , September 14, 2008 (view all comments by Shoshana)
Blindness is an example of ray gun science fiction ("What if there were an awesome ray gun?!"), that is, the story's reason for existing is to answer the "what if?" In science fiction, the impetus of this subgenre is often an invention, a new discovery, or contact with aliens. Saramago's device is a sudden, contagious blindness of unknown etiology and mechanism. This is fine so far as it goes. McCarthy's The Road relies on a similar narrative strategy ("What if there were a cataclysmic event?") In this case, the technique allows the author to imagine a cascade of social and cultural events that would follow from the original event (again, similar to The Road). This is fine so far as it goes. Saramago does a good job of envisioning the increasingly dire circumstances of the protagonists, and the plot is sufficiently engrossing. However, Blindness shares several of The Road's flaws: There is minimal punctuation (which in this case, at least provides the reader with a parallel visual impairment), the characters' voices and personalities are largely interchangeable, and the resolution, while different in kind from McCarthy's, provokes a similar disappointment--the return to the story's "home" is too tidy and oversimplified, and ultimately demonstrates the author's failure of creativity, boldness, or both. Call it a 3/5 star read: Not bad, but not especially memorable, either.

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Megan Willis , September 28, 2007 (view all comments by Megan Willis)
Saramago's frightening work of a world caught in white blindness is graphic to a point where the reader feels uncomfartably trapped in the confines of its pages. The work is ultimately brilliant in its use of one women's healthy eyes to uncover the horror of her companions' whited out world. "Blindness" is unforgettable read that explores variations in human character critically and realistically. Saramago relies only on the period and comma, but I found his work easily read. Just be prepared for no quotation marks and hardly any clues as to who is speaking (although they are there when necessary). Run-on are also prevalent throughout. It's his style and the flow is easily followed.

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A.K. Strong , May 30, 2007 (view all comments by A.K. Strong)
A remarkable text demonstrating the effects of our placement of vision as the most informative sense of them all. We read, watch, drive, pick mates, etc. all with vision, and Saramago explores the possibility of vision being lost within everyone, thus equalizing society, in a very strange way. A very powerful read that is sure to be equally as memorable.

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mary rathlev , April 08, 2007
The entire point of the novel revolves around the woman who can see. Her role is so much graver than the others. She sees the filth they have experieced. They only sense it. What is she to do with this knowledge. She has no idea how to manage this reposnisibility. How many can so identify wih this experiecne?

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Pessahryan , December 02, 2006
great book

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Product Details

ISBN:
9780156007757
Binding:
Trade Paperback
Publication date:
10/04/1999
Publisher:
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN HARCOURT
Series info:
Harvest Book
Pages:
352
Height:
1.00IN
Width:
5.30IN
Thickness:
1.00
Series:
Harvest Book
Age Range:
14 and up
Grade Range:
9 and up
Number of Units:
1
Copyright Year:
1999
Series Volume:
2952-1
UPC Code:
2800156007759
Translator:
Giovanni Pontiero
Author:
Jose Saramago
Media Run Time:
B
Subject:
Psychological fiction
Subject:
Fiction
Subject:
Allegories
Subject:
Blindness
Subject:
Literature-A to Z
Subject:
Continental european fiction (fictional works

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