Tragicomedy
Member
Thanks to Cyan for letting me hop in this month!
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”
― José Saramago, Blindness
Blindness by José Saramago
From Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of loss.
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her charges—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.
“In Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human.”
- Alix Wilber
“He has written a novel that says more about the days we are living in than any book I have read. He writes with wit, with heartbreaking dignity, and with the simplicity of a great artist in full control of his art. Let us listen to a true elder of our people, a man of tears, a man of wisdom.”
- The Guardian
“Saramago’s baroque imagination is his hallmark--readers have to hand themselves over to his fantasy, to be taken on a bizarre and unpredictable journey.”
- Lisa Jardine
Find it here:
Kindle edition
Paperback edition
Or try your local library. Let's read!
Guidelines:
-Discussion of anything and everything is encouraged. It's a book club, let's chat!
-Please use spoiler tags sensibly.
-The milestones are there to help keep you on the path. If you get ahead or behind, don't worry--it will have no impact on your final grade.
Reading Milestones (courtesy of The Culture Vulture!):
Feb 1-8 || pg 103
Feb 9-15 || pg 215
Feb 16-22 || pg 293 (finish)
Previous Book Club Threads:
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (Jan 2014)
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Sept 2013)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (July 2013)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Feb-Mar 2013)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (September 2012)
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (January 2012)
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (December 2011)
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy (Oct 2011)
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (Sep 2011)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (Aug 2011)
Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian (July 2011)
The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin (June 2011)
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (May 2011)
The Afghan Campaign, by Steven Pressfield (Apr 2011)
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein (Mar 2011)
Flashman, by George MacDonald Fraser (Feb 2011)[/QUOTE]
“Perhaps only in a world of the blind will things be what they truly are.”
― José Saramago, Blindness
Blindness by José Saramago
From Nobel Prize–winning author José Saramago, a magnificent, mesmerizing parable of loss.
A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" that spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides her charges—among them a boy with no mother, a girl with dark glasses, a dog of tears—through the barren streets, and their procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing. As Blindness reclaims the age-old story of a plague, it evokes the vivid and trembling horrors of the twentieth century, leaving readers with a powerful vision of the human spirit that's bound both by weakness and exhilarating strength.
“In Blindness he has written a profound, ultimately transcendent meditation on what it means to be human.”
- Alix Wilber
“He has written a novel that says more about the days we are living in than any book I have read. He writes with wit, with heartbreaking dignity, and with the simplicity of a great artist in full control of his art. Let us listen to a true elder of our people, a man of tears, a man of wisdom.”
- The Guardian
“Saramago’s baroque imagination is his hallmark--readers have to hand themselves over to his fantasy, to be taken on a bizarre and unpredictable journey.”
- Lisa Jardine
Find it here:
Kindle edition
Paperback edition
Or try your local library. Let's read!
Guidelines:
-Discussion of anything and everything is encouraged. It's a book club, let's chat!
-Please use spoiler tags sensibly.
-The milestones are there to help keep you on the path. If you get ahead or behind, don't worry--it will have no impact on your final grade.
Reading Milestones (courtesy of The Culture Vulture!):
Feb 1-8 || pg 103
Feb 9-15 || pg 215
Feb 16-22 || pg 293 (finish)
Previous Book Club Threads:
The Quiet American by Graham Greene (Jan 2014)
If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino (Sept 2013)
Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov (July 2013)
Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (Feb-Mar 2013)
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (September 2012)
Catch-22, by Joseph Heller (January 2012)
The Shadow of the Wind, by Carlos Ruiz Zafón (December 2011)
Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West, by Cormac McCarthy (Oct 2011)
The Master and Margarita, by Mikhail Bulgakov (Sep 2011)
The Count of Monte Cristo, by Alexandre Dumas (Aug 2011)
Master and Commander, by Patrick O'Brian (July 2011)
The Happiness Project, by Gretchen Rubin (June 2011)
A Visit from the Goon Squad, by Jennifer Egan (May 2011)
The Afghan Campaign, by Steven Pressfield (Apr 2011)
Stranger in a Strange Land, by Robert A. Heinlein (Mar 2011)
Flashman, by George MacDonald Fraser (Feb 2011)[/QUOTE]
