Imagine sitting at your desk, driving a car, doing the dishes, changing a diaper, having sex, performing brain surgery….and suddenly, inexplicably, being struck blind. Imagine that scene repeating over and over across a city. Then imagine the mass hysteria that inevitably begins, rising to a fevered pitch. “Blindness” does that, but not in a usual sci-fi style of writing. Instead, this work, authored by a Nobel Prize for Literature winner, the late José Saramago, reads more like Dante’s poetry than any hot zone adventure.