The book is written by Portuguese authors Jose Saramago, who published more than 30 novels, memoirs, and essay collections. This novel is known as one of his most famous, important and influential works. It was also turned into a movie.

The story begins with a man waiting at a traffic light in his car, when suddenly he loses his sight. That’s how the epidemic starts. Very quickly it spreads across the city. The government decides to organise a place for sick people and those who were in contact with them. As a place for a quarantine they select an empty mental hospital. Through the whole book we observe a group of people. They have to navigate tough situations brought by a sudden epidemic of blindness.

Right from the beginning we are immersed into Saramago’s unique writing style. Those long flowing sentences that lack punctuation. Sometimes you can’t even be sure which character is talking.

Another choice that the author made was not to give names to his characters. He decided to identify them by descriptions instead. It’s a sneaky move to use inside a group of blind people. He points at someone by their distinct features, usually related to their look, like “the girl with the dark glasses”. There are other purposes for this choice as well. Those people represent the whole of humanity, not individuals. If an epidemic would happen anywhere else they would have a very similar experience. For the same reason, we are more focused on actions in this book, rather than character’s backgrounds.

I liked the story until a certain point. There were a few options to cut it shorter, where it would have a greater impact. We are shown how easy it is to break norms of the society in times of a crisis, how important it is to preserve empathy and compassion in tough situations. But then, the story goes on and on, slows down, and doesn’t arouse any new significant emotions.

Thinking of it now, there is a similarity between Saramago’s “Blindness” and “Under the dome” by Stephen King. Both books reveal a lot of abomination in people at the time when you should be combining your efforts for survival. If you read one book, you’ll know what to expect from the other.

The idea itself is clever, even the pessimistic worldview and all the gore is understandable. We are immersed into that to imagine all the cruelty and despair of a situation. But something didn’t click for me. It became predictable after a few events. As the famous Chekhov’s saying tells us: “If there is a gun hanging on the wall in the first act, it must fire…”. And you sit and wait until it happens, because you clearly saw that loaded gun.

If you decide to read this book. I’d recommend you not to expect much from the plot. Allow the story to flow, try to imagine yourself as one of the people from the main group. Try to feel how fragile our society is. Take your time to think how you would behave.

One day I’ll try some other Saramago’s novel. I already have some of them on my bookshelf. Though it won’t happen soon.