BVBook Verdict
Essential Read

Blindness

by Jose Saramago · 1995

Literary Fiction · ranked #219 in category

A sudden epidemic of blindness strikes an unnamed city, and the infected are quarantined in an abandoned mental asylum where social order rapidly collapses. Saramago's novel follows one woman — the only person who can see — through the catastrophe. It is both a philosophical fable about what civilisation actually requires and a viscerally disturbing account of what people do when structure disappears.

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The verdict

Category
Literary Fiction
First published
1995 · 1990s
Author
Jose Saramago
Standing
Essential Read

About Literary Fiction

Literary fiction sits at the intersection of fine writing and serious storytelling — novels that reward attention and stay with you long after the last page. These are the books that alter your sense of what's possible in prose.

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