Blindness (Vintage classics)

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Dawtrey, Adam (2008-04-29). " 'Blindness' to open Cannes". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-05-01. After the democratic revolution in 1974, on 9 April 1975, during the rule of Vasco Gonçalves, Saramago became the assistant director of the newspaper Diário de Notícias, and the editorial line became clearly pro-communist. A group of 30 journalists - half the editorial staff - handed the board a petition calling for the editorial line to be revised and for it to be published. A plenary was called and, following an angry intervention by Saramago, 24 journalists were expelled, accused of being right-wingers. After the Coup of 25 November 1975 that put an end to the communist PREC, Saramago, in turn, was fired from the newspaper. [12]

Or consider Seeing, which Saramago published in 2004. Something of a sequel, or rather conclusion, to Blindness, this novel has people become lucid, with a vast majority of voters casting blank ballots during elections. Once again, the government reacts aggressively, accusing its own citizens of terrorism. And once again, our supposedly democratic institutions fail to respond to reality, as Saramago always warns us they will. Ursula K. Le Guin, whose literary work I consider to be as philosophically important as Saramago’s, felt that Seeing says more about the days we live in than any other book she had ever read. Had she not passed in 2018, she may well have related our recent pandemic and wars to Saramago’s writing as well. Clavin, Tom (2008-06-04). "The 'Savage Grace' Of Julianne Moore". hamptons.com. Hamptons Online . Retrieved 2008-07-25.Tens of Thousands of Blind Americans Object to the Movie 'Blindness' ". American Council of the Blind. 2008-09-29. Archived from the original on 2008-10-07 . Retrieved 2008-10-01. Meritt, Stephanie (30 April 2006). "Interview: Still a street-fighting man". The Observer . Retrieved 30 April 2006.

There is, of course, a lot of scepticism and dystopian pessimism in Saramago’s work. In part, this has to do with a certain melancholy aspect of the Portuguese mentality. But it is also related to the fact that Saramago became a writer in a very difficult, even hostile, context: he began writing under a fascist regime; had no academic education; didn’t belong to the cultural, bourgeois elite; and found it difficult at times to make a living. All this surely contributed to his increasingly pessimistic character. The Swedish Academy selected Saramago as the 1998 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature. The announcement came when he was about to fly out of Germany after the Frankfurt Book Fair, and caught both him and his editor by surprise. [9] The Nobel committee praised his "parables sustained by imagination, compassion and irony", and his "modern skepticism" about official truths. [13] Decorations [ edit ] Tokyo International Film Festival | "BLINDNESS" Press Conference with Director Fernando Meirelles, Actresses Julian Moore, Yoshino Kimura and more!!".His move to Lanzarote marked a shift in his fiction. His later books, set in unspecified countries, are less tangibly rooted in Portuguese life and history, or the streets and storms of Lisbon. The speculative element has come to the fore. Another writer of speculative fiction, Ursula K Le Guin, admires in them the "sound, sweet humour" and simplicity of a "great artist in full control of his art". Yet for the novelist Helder Macedo, emeritus professor of Portuguese at King's College London, Saramago has always been a "writer of allegories with a universal outlook. His starting-point is not 'once upon a time', but 'what if?'." For Saramago, "my work is about the possibility of the impossible. I ask the reader to accept a pact; even if the idea is absurd, the important thing is to imagine its development. The idea is the point of departure, but the development is always rational and logical." The first part of the novel follows the experiences of the central characters in the filthy, overcrowded asylum where they and other blind people have been quarantined. Hygiene, living conditions, and morale degrade horrifically in a very short period, mirroring the society outside. Langer, Adam (November–December 2002). "José Saramago: Prophet of Doom – Pessimism is our only hope. The gospel according to José Saramago". Book Magazine. Archived from the original on 31 October 2002 . Retrieved 20 June 2010. After an uprising, folks find out the asylum has been abandoned by the army who was until then responsible for it and they’re able to leave. Realizing that what they went through in quarantine was only a detail in the huge landscape, now we follow our protagonists as they wander through the city in search of better conditions: water, food, clothes, a way to find their homes and their relatives.

Meirelles chose an international cast. Producer Niv Fichman explained Meirelles' intent: "He was inspired by [Saramago's] great masterwork to create a microcosm of the world. He wanted it cast in a way to represent all of humanity." [13] Production [ edit ] Development [ edit ] The Day of the Triffids, the 1951 John Wyndham novel (and its many adaptations) about societal collapse following widespread blindness The doctor’s wife, who takes the law into her own hands in Blindness, and Raimundo Silva, whose anarchical action literally rewrites history in The History of the Siege of Lisbon, find their counterpart in the police commissioner in Seeing. All these protagonists break with the status quo and make free choices that transcend their individuality while also taking others into consideration, and they all assume responsibility for their actions in their social and historical context. In Seeing, the idea of freedom manifests in the form of a liberating political action, whether practiced individually by the protagonist or as a collective by all those who cast blank ballots. Saramago suggests that any ethical and moral orientation can only be deduced from an understanding of freedom that expresses itself in action.Karl Marx was never so right, says Nobel laureate Saramago". MercoPress (Quote here is based on the source heading; there appears to be a typing error in the source text.). 28 October 2008 . Retrieved 28 October 2008. Author decries Blindness protests as misguided". CBC News. October 4, 2008 . Retrieved May 26, 2013. But it was also half a century ago that the Wiriyamu massacre was committed in Mozambique, for which the Portuguese Prime Minister has recently issued a public apology on behalf of his country. Also 50 years ago, three books appeared that each, in its own way, contributed to the decline of the dictatorship: Portugal Amordaçado (“Portugal Gagged”) by Mário Soares; Dinossauro Excelentíssimo (“Great Dinosaur”) by José Cardoso Pires; and, above all, the New Portuguese Letters by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa. Last but not least, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the song “Grândola, vila morena” (Grândola, Swarthy Town) by Zeca Afonso, which heralded the beginning of the Carnation Revolution. Thompson, Anne (2008-05-20). "Buyers proceed with caution at Cannes". Variety. Reed Business Information . Retrieved 2008-05-20.