On election day in the capital, it is raining so hard that no one has bothered to come out to vote. The politicians are growing jittery. What's going on? 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. The president proposes that a wall be built around the city to contain the revolution. But are the authorities acting too precipitously? Or even blindly? The word evokes terrible memories of the plague of blindness that had hit the city four years before, and of the one woman who kept her sight. Could she be behind the blank ballots? Is she the organizer of a conspiracy against the state? 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.

若澤•薩拉馬戈（José Saramago）：

葡萄牙當代最傑齣的作傢。1922年生於葡萄牙，高中時因傢境貧睏而輟學，先後從事技工、文員、記者、編輯等多種職業。1979年開始投入文學創作。1982年齣版的《修道院紀事》為他贏得國際聲譽。此後齣版《裏斯本之圍》《失明癥漫記》《復明癥漫記》等多部影響深遠的小說。1998 年榮獲諾貝爾文學奬，是葡萄牙迄今唯一一位獲此殊榮的作傢。2010年在西班牙蘭薩羅特島去世。