I won’t give away any spoilers, as I would really encourage anyone to read it. It starts with the doctor and his wife.Īmongst this gloomy atmosphere, some positives emerge but essentially, Saramago studies human behaviour and imagines what would happen to society if blindness did befall every human being. ‘Ensaio sobre a cegueira’ is an incredibly powerful novel and bears many similarities to the panic and anxiety we’re currently experiencing globally: It relates the story of a mass epidemic, in an unnamed city, where one-by-one people are getting blind and are being quarantined. You will never look at a cathedral in the same way after reading it! I don’t usually go for dystopian novels, instead preferring fiction that transports me into some imaginary world that is or at least - could be - historically accurate, like Ken Follett’s Middle Ages in ‘The Pillars of the Earth’ for example. Since Italy’s lock down last week, I can’t stop thinking about the excellent book by the Portuguese author Jose Saramago (1998 Nobel Prize winner of Literature): ‘Ensaio sobre a cegueira’ - translated as simply: ‘Blindness’ but accurately should read ‘Essay on blindness’.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |