Blindness (Ensaio sobre a Cegueira, "An Essay on Blindness") is a 1995 novel by José Saramago.
An unnamed country is swept by a plague that causes everyone to go blind, creating societal chaos.
The book is followed by Seeing (Ensaio Sobre a Lucidez, "An Essay on Lucidity"), a 2004 novel set in the same country and with some Character Overlap. Blindness was adapted into a film in 2008.
This novel contains examples of:
- Belated Happy Ending: In the sequel, set years later, the plague has passed and society has returned to normal.
- Bottomless Magazines: The King of Ward 3 has a revolver that has capacity of more than six bullets. Oddly, it is not used as a plot point, so this trope comes into play despite the person wielding it being blind.
- Disability Superpower: All of humanity becomes blind with the exception of one person. People who were previously blind are accustomed to their condition, and have enough of an advantage that at least one becomes a gang leader of sorts.
- Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": None of the characters have a name. They are referred to by their profession or physical appearance. The central couple are "the doctor" and "the doctor's wife".
- The Immune: The story follows the one woman immune to the plague of blindness.
- Nameless Narrative: The characters are referred to by their roles or (ironically, given the fact all of them are stricken by blindness) physical descriptions.
- Post-Apocalyptic Dog: Civilization begins to collapse (at least in the unnamed city where the action takes place) after a plague of blindness strikes. A loving, faithful dog called only the "dog of tears" accompanies the one remaining sighted human in her quest to save herself and those around her.
- Scarpia Ultimatum: A gang of inmates led by the only man with a gun takes over the quarantined abandoned asylum, threatening the other residents, and stealing and hoarding all the food supplies. Eventually they demand payment in valuables, and then in women. The women volunteer to go, as a group, in order to save the lives of all the other people living there.
- Temporary Blindness: This happens to an entire (unnamed) country, progressively, but for one woman. The "blindness" in question is unusual: milky-white instead of pitch-black. Needless to say, civilization crumbles in it.
- Wham Line: "I know you can see."
- Where the Hell Is Springfield?: The action takes place in an unidentified city in an unnamed country. Saramago considered this important enough that one of his conditions for allowing the film adaptation was that it must do the same.
