A driver stopped at a traffic light goes blind, and the blindness spreads. Within days an entire city loses its sight, and José Saramago follows the afflicted into quarantine, into filth and cruelty and the collapse of every structure that once made civilization feel permanent. Written in flowing, unpunctuated dialogue that merges voices into a single roaring current, the novel strips away names, reducing characters to archetypes: the doctor, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint. Only one woman retains her vision, and through her witness the story becomes an unflinching parable about what holds societies together and how quickly dignity can be revoked. It is a book that sees everything by taking sight away.