Blindness

Blindness (Portuguese: Ensaio sobre a cegueira, lit. 'Essay on Blindness') is a 1995 novel by Portuguese author José Saramago. It centers on an unexplained mass epidemic of blindness afflicting nearly everyone in a nonspecific city, and follows multiple unnamed characters as they navigate the social breakdown that swiftly follows. The novel was translated into English by Giovanni Pontiero in 1997. In 1998, Saramago received the Nobel Prize for Literature, and Blindness was one of his works noted by the committee when announcing the award. A sequel titled Seeing was published in 2004. Blindness was adapted into a film of the same name in 2008.