None of the blind characters have any external identities beyond their newfound blindness – i.e. The most common objection among blind readers to the novel concerns the complete lack of initiative shown by the blind internees even in terms of the most basic bodily functions – we’re talking shitting on the floor folks! Yet in some regards the story is not grim enough. How do you feel about the above story? There’s something to be said for any work that acknowledges that disabled people have libidos. 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.

Blindness book jose saramago