I picked this book up after reading the following snippet from an interview with Saramago:

INTERVIEWER: I liked Blindness very much, but it is not an easy read. It is a hard book. The translation is very good.

SARAMAGO: Did you know that Giovanni Portiero, my longtime English translator, died?

INTERVIEWER: When?

SARAMAGO: In February. He died of AIDS. He was translating Blindness, which he finished, when he died. Toward the end, he himself started to go blind as a result of the medication his doctors gave him. He had to choose between taking the medication, which would sustain him for a bit longer, and not taking it, which would create other risks. He chose, shall we say, to preserve his vision, and he was translating a novel about blindness. It was a devastating situation.

The book is like Lord of the Flies, but stratified about the axis of disability. With each scene an exploration of the depravity or resilience of humanity, of disability and sense, degradation and dignity, this book is a highbrow study of human nature. We get teased by Chekhov’s disease, Chekhov’s fire, Chekhov’s flood, Chekhov’s rape, and more. What the book lacks in juicy content, it compensates for with its stylistic prose (stream of consciousness, nameless characters to strip them down to “what it is that they can provide” in the new, blind world order).

related