Blindness By Jose Saramago. A city is hit by an epidemic of "white blindness" which spares no one. Authorities confine the blind to an empty mental hospital, but there the criminal element holds everyone captive, stealing food rations and assaulting women. There is one eyewitness to this nightmare who guides seven strangers through the barren streets, and the procession becomes as uncanny as the surroundings are harrowing.