Publisher's Synopsis
Portuguese writer José de Sousa Saramago won the 1998 Nobel Prize in Literature. On election day in the capital, it was raining so hard that no one went out to vote. Politicians were increasingly confused. Should they postpone the election to another day? Around three in the afternoon, the rain finally stopped. At exactly four o'clock, voters flocked to the polls, as if they had been ordered to show up at the same time, but when the ballots were counted, more than 70 percent were abstentions. Rebel citizens. A state of emergency is declared. But did the authorities act too hastily? Or even blind? These abstentions evoke terrible memories of the plague of blindness that hit the city four years ago, and of a single woman who still retains her sight. Could it be that she was the one behind those ballots? The irony about governments and the reliability of the democratic system turns into something sinister and very elusive."Through the image of the election without a shadow of people when it rained heavily. When the rain stopped, the polling room was packed with people to vote. But the result was 70% abstention. People no longer have confidence in the government and the democratic system. The work is like a writer's voice instead of the human condition in a crazy society.
