New York. 1998. Harcourt Brace. Advance Reading Copy. Very Good in Wrappers.

New York. 1998. Harcourt Brace. Advance Reading Copy. Very Good in Wrappers. 0151002517. Translated from the Portuguese by Giovanni Pontiero. 294 pages. paperback. keywords: Portugal Translated Literature. DESCRIPTION-Winner of the 1998 Nobel Prize for Literature. A city is hit by an epidemic of 'white blindness. ' The blindness spreads, sparing no one. Authorities confine the blind to a vacant mental hospital secured by armed guards. Inside, the criminal element among the blind hold the rest captive: food rations are stolen, women are raped. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers through the barren streets. The developments within this oddly anonymous group--the first blind man, the old man with the black eye patch, the girl with dark glasses, the boy with no mother, and the dog of tears--are as uncanny as the surrounding chaos is harrowing. A parable of loss and disorientation, of man's worst appetities and hopeless weaknesses, Blindness is one of the most challenging, thought-provoking, and ultimately exhilarating novels published in any language in recent years. inventory #25754.