151. Blindness by Jose Saramago
Blindness (Vintage Classics, 1997; 309; translated by Giovanni Pontiero) is a story that investigates human behaviour with political undertones; what makes someone do one thing and not the other; does the conscience behind an activity matter? Jose Saramago, the 1998 Nobel Laureate, used this experimental book to investigate these issues in ways similar to William Golding's Lord of the Flies . People are suddenly going blind in an unnamed city. A man in his car, waiting for the traffic light to turn from red to amber and then green, suddenly lost his sight. The Good Samaritan who took him home and later stole his car also lost his sight. The doctor who looked at his strange case lost his sight in his house whilst researching more on the man's conditions; a prostitute who had just left the doctor's place and was meeting her client got blind whilst having sex with this man. The authorities in order to contain, what became known as the white blindness - because...