Blindness by Saramago, Jose; Pontiero, Giovanni (translator) - 1998

Harcourt, 1998. Hardcover. Very Good/very good. Brilliant Portuguese fabulist Saramago (The History of the Siege of Lisbon) has never shied away from big game. His previous works have rewritten the history of Portugal, reimagined the life of Christ and remodeled a continent by cleaving the Iberian peninsula from Europe and setting it adrift. Here, Saramago stalks two of our oldest themes in the tale of a plague of blindness that strikes an unnamed European city. At the novel's opening, a driver sits in traffic, waiting for the light to change. By the time it does, his field of vision is white, a "milky sea." One by one, each person the man encounters (the not-so-good Samaritan who drives him home, the man's wife, the ophthalmologist, the patients waiting to see the ophthalmologist) is struck blind. Like any inexplicable contagion, this plague of "white sickness" sets off panic. 1998 winner of the Nobel Prize.