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Jose Saramago. Ensaio sobre A Cegueira. Lisbon. Caminho. 1995. 310 pages. Cr$1,575. ISBN 972-21-1021-7.
In a recent interview Jose Saramago refers to a temporary loss of vision in 1991 to explain in part the genesis of his latest novel, an "essay on blindness." However, such an experience, no matter how unsettling, could hardly account for this story of an entire society swept by a mysterious epidemic that leaves its victims helpless when their vision is suddenly blocked by a curtain of white. The first case of such blindness concerns a motorist stricken on the novel's first page as he stops at a traffic light. A passing pedestrian helps him return to his nearby apartment, only to drive off with the man's car. But the thief is himself stricken shortly afterward as he parks the stolen vehicle. The first victim, taken by his frantic wife to the nearest ophthalmologist, leaves the doctor baffled. After alerting health officials, the doctor himself becomes sightless while researching the possible causes of the mysterious malady. At this point the alarmed authorities order the immediate internment of the afflicted, who now include the first man's wife and the doctor's regular patients, who had been exposed in his waiting room. Only the doctor's wife remains immune, but she feigns blindness to accompany her husband to an abandoned insane asylum where the epidemic is to be contained. Its first victims constitute the novel's main characters.
Guarded by terrified soldiers, the growing numbers of sightless people transform the former asylum into a scene of horror as rudimentary plumbing fails...