Interesting - I was reading Lucky's blog (see link on side column) - and I realized the Lucky has read the same book as the one that enlightened my summer: "An Essay About Blindness", word for word translation. I guess that the English translation is simply Blindness. Jose Sarammago was awarded a Nobel Prize in 1998.
In fact, I wrote an essay about this book in my third language exam at INSEAD.

This book depicts what happened to a society when a heavily contagious blindness, with no apparent cause and no known cure, strikes. It draws some of the same conclusions as Zimbardo conducting his prison experiment at Stanford in the 70s: people's primal behavior springs out of a transposition of context.

In Sarammago's book, all characters are unamed. This anonymous description of their psychological dimensions creates an even more powerful allegory for the various societal functions. Society facing a nameless invisible enemy is scared. It does not know how to fight back. Original bases for power are challenged.

Interestingly in the book, one character, the wife of the first eye doctor hit by this blindness, does not fall victim to the evil disease, creating a distortion in power balance.

People are put in quarantine, marginalized, yet society does not have the courage to eliminate what has now become a threat. In this dark prison, the "patients" re-invent rules and priorities. Fights for power, fights for food, fights for sex take over rationality. Even the "Love is blind" concept is demonstrated with this extremely well written, extremely powerful, extremely clear and crude essay.

An army general advocating the use of force based on the inferiority and lack of utility of the victims commit suicides when he discovers that he has lost his sight - young people, remember societies which might recommend a social structure which does not take care of its non-contributors (elderly, disabled, unemployed). Everyone can become a marginal citizen.

Society falls increasingly into chaos as pilots become blinds and cause major crashes, as infrastructure becomes useless, as power plant operators cannot control energy levels, as retailers cannot get their supply of foods.
Society loses its last hope as the last researcher becomes blind before having identified the source of the disease.

Can the world be saved? How? By whom or by what?
Book available in libraries, bookshop and online retailers in multiple languages.

Thank you Lucky