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Jose Saramago's Blindness is an interesting book. Like stone raft, this is also based on a wild imagination. This time it is "What if an epidemic, which makes everyone blind spreads across the country?".

Saramago has given shape to this question and what follows is an interesting story that creates an imaginary world with many metaphors. He writes it so well that you are totally out of the question of how this epidemic was caused and you are immersed deeply into his imaginary territory.

He creates a different world with the blind peoples.The people who become blind at the start are all put in a separate asylum and power oppression happens, reminding us of george orwell classics.

We live in a refined society which is built over so many rules and regulations, so many Religious and moral rules. In the novel, with the blindness all those imaginary structures are broken and a human is reduced to his primitive self, fighting for his basic needs. With a single stroke the human being's centuries of advancement's are reverted and he is back hunting in groups for food. Saramago exploits these conditions to put forth so many questions to us.

Jose saramago

The book reminded me of two things. One was rajeev anchal's movie GURU which was about a fantasy world of blind peoples. Not sure whether he got the idea from this book. and second was the incidents that took place on the aftermath of hurricane katrina.The situation of system breakdown in the books was kind of similar to that of the Katrina aftermath.

Rajeev anchal's guru.

In this book also Saramago uses his hard to read writing style with page long sentences and paragraphs. But words flow out of this guy like a perennial river.He is just unstoppable with his imagination.

Links
Guru Review at Alternate movies
Jose Saramago's nobel page

Labels: book, english, jose saramago