Finished: Blindness, a novel by Jos� Saramago:

"Say to a blind man, you're free, open the door that was separating him from the world, Go, you are free, we tell him once more, & he does not go, he has remained motionless there in the middle of the road, he & the others, they are terrified, they do not know where to go, the fact is that there is no comparison between living in a rational labyrinth, which is, by definition, a mental asylum & venturing forth, without a guiding hand or a dog-leash, into the demented labyrinth of the city, where memory will serve no purpose, for it will merely be able to recall the images of places but not the paths where by we might get there."

//

Blindness was a difficult novel to read. The subject matter was not obscure at all; instead, it reveals a wretchedness of the human will that is all too familiar.

Rini said it made her feel a little older. People will do anything to survive.

Why attempt to understand a horror without a name, when a search for clarity seems futile? Everyday I walk a familiar path, following a pale light like a thread in a minotaur's lair, and at the thread's end, knot in fist, I find myself at the path's beginning.

And yet, blindness is also this, to live in a world where all hope is gone.

<<