Definitely an intriguing premise - an unspecified nation (we're led to believe that it's some kind of liberal democracy, even if there seems to be a great deal of deference to the state, in the form of "the Ministry") is swept by an epidemic of contagious blindness. There are a lot of directions in which a novel could go from that starting point, and Saramago chooses to draw out two (or perhaps three) of the most quintessential concerns of twentieth century literature - the tenuousness of individual freedom in the face of the might of the (always potentially coercive) state and the fragility of so-called 'civilised society', and the manners in which people adjust (or fail to adjust) to dramatic changes in their everyday existences.
It's grittily written, and Saramago doesn't shy away from taking moral positions (dealing honestly, for example, with the possibility that the only way to meet violence may be with violence). The characters are realistic - despite having titles rather than names ("the first blind man", "the doctor's wife", "the girl with dark glasses"), they come across as people (albeit people in a situation where names have lost much, if not all, of their importance) rather than as representatives or exemplars of 'types' - and while Saramago's vision of human nature is by no means rosy, it is, I think, guardedly optimistic.
In some ways pretty heavy going, Blindness isn't the kind of book that I'd normally enjoy (a friend picked it more or less randomly from the library), but I reckon it to be a really substantial, serious attempt at tackling its concerns, and I'm glad that I've read it.
