This is as perfect as fiction can be.That I picked it up in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic is nearly uncanny because the Nobel prize-winning author’s brilliantly distinctive work is about an epidemic: White Blindness. Translated from Portuguese, this masterwork serves as an allegory for the incivility of culture, civil only when highly organized by the decent, the empathetic, the visionary. Some readers may object to the author’s intentional lack of punctuation to delineate speakers; once accepted, this adds to the flow, the fluidity of explosive events. I am in process of reading everything Jose Saramago has written, and only regret he is not alive to give us more.

I read this book to furfil the goal read a book with a character with a vision impairment or enhancement (a nod to 20/20 vision). it's also #181 on the list of 300 books everyone should read once challenge featured on listopia. It was kindof creepy. i kept thinking if you substituted covid 19 with the word blindness you would have our day. kindof scared myself reading it.

A terrific book; fun to read; peppered with aphorisms and insights that one reads but can't linger over. None of the characters have names, and the book follows the actions of a small group of characters; it ends on a hopeful note.

Chilling metaphor. Raises the question: what is my personal blindness? Have read other books by this author and think this is his best.

This account of a society with "white blindness" left me with images I cannot unsee - even after 2 years (perhaps USA 2017-19 is a time especially ripe). Am now reading Camus "The Plague", and realize I must reread to fully reopen the ideas Saramago bloomed in my head. *parting thought - if you are tempted to view bird box, read this instead*

At first I had a very hard time getting into this book because of its lack of punctuation and paragraphs. But as I got into it, somehow the imagery became very strong for me, and a couple years after reading it I still have very vivid images in my mind of this book. That's saying a lot, because I read so much I often forget what I've read even 2-3 books later.

A vision to human nature. Human nature is presented as being no different, fundamentally, from animal nature – self-serving and ultimately geared towards mere survival. Saramago was a proponent of Hobbes. Thomas Hobbes argued that man is born wicked and must be civilised. Left in a “state of nature”, Hobbes famously argued, our lives would be “nasty, brutish and short”. We would fight continually over power and resources. Deference to authority is therefore an act of self-preservation: we put our faith in strong leaders, and civic institutions such as the law, to save us from ourselves. Recent scientific findings suggests Hobbes was right.

I'm glad that I persevered past the first 2 sections as this unique writing style makes sense once you allow yourself to let go of the habitual preference for formal dialogue grammar and structure. I didn't finish this book as I found the pacing slowed down half-way through, mostly because I wasn't comfortable in the sheer squalor that became the wards and the plausibility of this being the case became to visceral and depressing. I took lots of little bits away from this book, though. It was thought-provoking.

This book is life as it is today with many taking more than they deserve or can ever use leaving others barely to survive or to die from want instead. Man is said to be the higher animal. I doubt it. I had to both read the book along with the audio book to make sense of it.

Brilliantly written and riveting. A powerful story worth exploring and experiencing.