The novel that probably prompted the Nobel committee to award José Saramago the Nobel Prize in 1998, this is a dark yet oddly uplifting fantasy about what might ensue if everyone suddenly became blind. The only eyewitness to the nightmare, a doctor's wife, fakes blindness in order to join her husband, while guiding seven strangers through the ravaged streets. Saramago's exuberant imagination, his capriciousness and perception, are fully expressed in this surprisingly engaging work about the difference between seeing and sight.