Blindness

Jose Saramago

Contents ( 5)

Title Page

Table of Contents

Dedication 1

Dedication 2

Epigraph

The amber light came on. ...

On offering to help the ...

A policeman took the car-thief ...

The suggestion had come from ...

I must open my eyes, ...

We must see if there's ...

An empty belly wakes up ...

The arrival of so many ...

When, at the beginning, the ...

The old man with the ...

If, because of a sudden ...

On the fourth day, the ...

Say to a blind man, ...

They dressed and put their ...

Leaving aside the household dust ...

Two days later the doctor ...

The next day, while still ...

Publishers' Note

More by Saramago:

Cain

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced
or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and
retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Requests for permission to make copies of any part of the work
should be mailed to: Permissions Department,
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Orlando, Florida 32887-6777.

First published in English in Great Britain in 1997 by The Harvill Press.

This is a translation of Ensaio sobre a Cegueira and is published with
the financial assistance of the Instituto Português do Livro e das
Bibliotecas, Lisbon, which is gratefully acknowledged.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Saramago, José.
[Ensaio sobre a cegueira. English]
Blindness: a novel/José Saramago; translated from the
Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero.—1st ed.
p. cm.

Originally published in English in Great Britain
in 1997 by The Harvill Press.
ISBN 0-15-100251-7
ISBN 0-15-600775-4 (pbk.)
I. Pontiero, Giovanni. II. Title.
PQ9281.A66E6813 1998
869.3'42—dc21 98-12009

Text set in Dante MT
Designed by Lori McThomas Buley
Printed in the United States of America
First Harvest edition 1999

A C E D B

For Pilar
For my daughter Violante

IN MEMORIAM
Giovanni Pontiero

If you can see, look.
If you can look, observe.
FROM THE Book of Exhortations

The amber light came on. Two of the cars ahead accelerated before the red light appeared. At the pedestrian crossing the sign of a green man lit up. The people who were waiting began to cross the road, stepping on the white stripes painted on the black surface of the asphalt, there is nothing less like a zebra, however, that is what it is called. The motorists kept an impatient foot on the clutch, leaving their cars at the ready, advancing, retreating like nervous horses that can sense the whiplash about to be inflicted. The pedestrians have just finished crossing but the sign allowing the cars to go will be delayed for some seconds, some people maintain that this delay, while apparently so insignificant, has only to be multiplied by the thousands of traffic lights that exist in the city and by the successive changes of their three colours to produce one of the most serious causes of traffic jams or bottlenecks, to use the more current term.