Point Books In Favor Of Seeing (Blindness #2)
| Original Title: | Ensaio Sobre a Lucidez |
| ISBN: | 0156032732 (ISBN13: 9780156032735) |
| Edition Language: | English |
| Series: | Blindness #2 |
| Literary Awards: | Independent Foreign Fiction Prize Nominee for Longlist (2007) |
José Saramago
Paperback | Pages: 307 pages Rating: 3.81 | 17437 Users | 1529 Reviews
Mention Regarding Books Seeing (Blindness #2)
| Title | : | Seeing (Blindness #2) |
| Author | : | José Saramago |
| Book Format | : | Paperback |
| Book Edition | : | First Edition |
| Pages | : | Pages: 307 pages |
| Published | : | April 9th 2007 by Mariner Books (first published March 2004) |
| Categories | : | Fiction. Literature. Cultural. Portugal. Science Fiction. Dystopia. Novels. European Literature. Portuguese Literature |
Ilustration During Books Seeing (Blindness #2)
On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has bothered to go out to vote. The politicians are growing jittery. Should they reschedule the elections for another day? Around three o' clock, the rain finally stops. Promptly at four, voters rush to the polling stations, as if they had been ordered to appear. But when the ballots are counted, more than 70 percent are blank. The citizens are rebellious. A state of emergency is declared. But are the authorities acting too precipitously? Or even blindly? The word evokes terrible memories of the plague of blindness that hit the city four years before, and of the one woman who kept her sight. Could she be behind the blank ballots? A police superintendent is put on the case. What begins as a satire on governments and the sometimes dubious efficacy of the democratic system turns into something far more sinister. A singular novel from the author of Blindness.Rating Regarding Books Seeing (Blindness #2)
Ratings: 3.81 From 17437 Users | 1529 ReviewsDiscuss Regarding Books Seeing (Blindness #2)
An astonishing political fiction of the 1998 winner of the Nobel literature.It comes to a capital where the people decided to vote "white", more than 80%. What will the government do? We are looking for culprits with spies and informers? Attempting a publicity campaign? And if the army were sent? But vote at its option, is not an inalienable right?It's full of humor and caricatures of politicians and is also full of reflections on democracy, rights and duties as citizens, and even the meaning ofFor many good reasons, besides being a brilliant dark and dense piece of text, this novel seems very actual to my state of mind. Not precisely within the same circumstances and effects (thank, god) but still it feels to go in line with some of the events that happened in my own country in the last 30 years (since we are again a free democracy) and I felt very strange about it. To be perfectly honest I feel as if I was lost in the middle of a minefield. But, is there a reason to be worried? Well,
Those looking for a sequel to Blindness will be surprised. While Seeing carries with it some of the same characters as Blindness, it is an entirely different beast of a book. Rather than the touching tale of survival that made its predecessor so acclaimed, Seeing is satire of the highest quality.How does a government respond when 83% of voters in the capital cast blank votes? With typical heavy-handedness and increasing degrees of ridiculousness. There must be a conspiracy at work, the
Reading Saramago is a lot like reading Faulkner. Once you get into his sentence structure and lack of punctuation, it's an entertaining read and you feel smarter when you're done. Like all the book reviewers say on the cover, this is a fascinating look not only at the people in government but also at how they react to crisis. As with Blindness, the book that precedes Seeing, this book left me asking, "so what happened?" or "how did it end?" Guess that's up to me, but I hope there's a third book
Like Blindness, Seeing is an exploration of a 'what if' scenario. For an unstated reason, 83% of the population casts blank votes in national elections, and continues to do so in subsequent 'runoff' elections. This causes a flurry of activity by the government (hinted to be the author's home country, Portugal) which becomes increasing nefarious and dark. The capital is put under siege by its own government, and when this fails to warrant a response from the docile populace, the government
I chose José Saramago's Seeing as an October read because Brazil held Presidential Elections on October 5th (1st round) and October 26th (2nd round, since no candidate received more than 50% of the valid votes the first time). Brazilian voting system is similar to that of the book's unnamed place in that it is compulsory. We've had the closest race ever, with elected President winning by 51.6% against second place with 48.4%.The book's story begins precisely on Election Day. Only the race wasn't
Set in an unnamed city, once again Jose Saramago creates an impossible sitiuation in order to write about the human condition. Jose Saramago was a humble genius, one of the rare few writers who could talk about the trival and mundane and make them seem so magical and important.As usual, he sets out to explore and joust with preconceived universal truths and every day notions, and exposes them, flips them on their heads, re-affirms familiar and age-old truths because in his own words "But truths
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