Blindness

An International Bestseller • "This is a shattering work by a literary master.”—Boston Globe

A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and raping women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. A magnificent parable of loss and disorientation, Blindness has swept the reading public with its powerful portrayal of our worst appetites and weaknesses—and humanity's ultimately exhilarating spirit.

"An important book, one that is unafraid to face all of the horror of the century."—Washington Post

A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
A Los Angeles Times Best Book of the Year

This discussion guide was shared and sponsored in partnership with Mariner Books/HarperCollins.

Book club questions for Blindness by Ginger Scott

Use these discussion questions to guide your next book club meeting.

To what extent may we read Blindness as a commentary on the excesses and horrors of the world of the twentieth century?

How do the women in the novel differ from the men in their attitude toward the blindness and the resulting conditions of life?

At the very end of the novel, the doctor tells his wife: "I don’t think we did go blind, I think we are blind, Blind but seeing, Blind people who can see, but do not see." What does he mean? How is this judgment related to the first blind man’s report to the doctor that his going blind was "More like a light going on"?

What is the purpose of Saramago’s use of proverbs, folk sayings, and cliches throughout the novel?

What are the social and political consequences of the quarantine to prevent the spread of white blindness?

Blindness Book Club Questions PDF

Click here for a printable PDF of the Blindness discussion questions

“Symphonic . . . [There is] a clear-eyed and compassionate acknowledgment of things as they are, a quality that can only honestly be termed wisdom. We should be grateful when it is handed to us in such generous measure.”—The New York Times Book Review

“Saramago's surreal allegory explores the ability of the human spirit to prevail in even the most absurdly unjust of conditions, yet he reinvents this familiar struggle with the stylistic eccentricity of a master.”—The New Yorker

“Extraordinarily nuanced and evocative . . . This year's most propulsive, and most profound, thriller.”—The Village Voice

“Like Jonathan Swift, Saramago uses airily matter-of-fact detail to frame a bitter parable; unlike Swift he pierces the parable with a dart of steely tenderness . . . out of leisurely prose, the ferocity and tenderness shoot suddenly: arrows set alight. . . . Enchanting, sinuous dialogue.”—The Los Angeles Times

“Blindness may be as revolutionary in its own way and time as were, say, The Trial and The Plague in theirs. Another masterpiece.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)