“Blindness” is a powerful novel by Portuguese author José Saramago, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature. The story follows a mysterious epidemic of “white blindness” that suddenly spreads across an unnamed city, causing people to lose their sight without any physical explanation. The government responds by placing the afflicted in a brutal quarantine, where civilization and morality quickly begin to collapse.

Amid the chaos, only one person—the wife of an ophthalmologist—retains her sight and becomes a witness to the unraveling of humanity.
With symbolic language and a distinctive narrative style, Saramago explores the concepts of seeing and blindness not only in the physical sense but also in terms of moral and social awareness. Blindness is a haunting, thought-provoking, and universal novel that compels readers to reconsider the essence of human nature and society.