Seeing (2006)

A hundred pages into this sequel to 1998's Blindness, you get this: ''[T]he narrator of this fable has paid scant, not to say non-existent, attention to the place in which the action described, albeit in rather leisurely fashion, is taking place.'' The fact that José Saramago hereby winks at Seeing's limitations — its vagueness, its rambling — only makes them more grating. It's set in the same metaphor-prone town that was swept by an epidemic of blindness in the earlier book. When most election-day voters cast blank ballots, the government first deserts the city, then orders an investigation. There may be a political allegory in there somewhere, but the Portuguese Nobel winner's storytelling is so hazy that it's hard to see the point.