Blindness, Seeing and Death with Interruptions

José Saramago, credit: José Frade José Saramago (1922-2010) was a remarkable Portuguese writer. He was well known for his strongly opinionated world views and admired for his literary skills. Although his writing career started arguably late, he was rewarded with Nobel Prize in Literature.

I've almost accidentally stumbled on his novel Blindness, which I read almost in one breath enchanted by his ponderings and fantasies how the world would react to a real epidemic of blindness.

Novels „Blindness“, „Seeing“ and „Death with Interruptions“ can be considered a loose trilogy, since their stories are set in the same imaginary land, but touch very lightly on each other…

Blindness is the first of the trilogy, and starts with a simple blindness of one ordinary person. Soon that single blindness turns out to be contagious, and everyone who was in contact with him loses his eyesight too. The book follows darkest human fears of how the society as a whole would react to unimaginable epidemic.

Although a fantasy, the story is set in a normal world, and the book is a mesmerizing read. I would highly recommend it to anyone!

Seeing is the book which follows the story of a political two-facedness. The idea for the book was simple: What would happen if nobody voted for any political party. As with the book before, in a lucid way the author criticizes society as a whole and politicians in particular. The book is riddled with ingenious twists and blunt depiction of pseudo democracy we now live in.

Would I recommend this book? Well, it’s a fine read, but nowhere near its predecessor. So if you have the time, give it a try…

Death with Interruptions is the last book in this trilogy, and its fable is set in the same imaginary country as in the previous two novels. The title quite openly gives us a clue what is now happening. At the start of the year, nobody dies. After a few days the society starts to ponder how it would handle eternity. Although gravely sick people stay in their state, no one can ever die anymore. Saramago grabs our attention, similarly to his first novel in trilogy, and tries to give his broad view of how would a typical society tackle possibility of eternal life. Moreover, death is personified and unexpectedly falls in love which leads to amazing ending.

As with the first novel, this was for me a fascinating read, and I’d recommend it to anyone who would like a bit of a thought provoking fantasy novel.