Durante las elecciones municipales de una ciudad sin nombre, la mayoría de sus habitantes decide individualmente ejercer su derech o al voto de una manera inesperada. El gobierno teme que ese gesto revolucionario, capaz de socavar los cimientos de una democraci a degenerada, sea producto de una conjura anarquista internacional o de grupos extremistas desconocidos. Las cloacas del poder se ponen en marcha: los culpables tienen que ser eliminados. Y si no se hallan, se inventan.
Los protagonistas de esta nueva novela de Saramago, un inspector de policía y la mujer que conservó la vista en la epidemia de luz blanca de Ensayo sobre la ceguera, dan muestras de la altura moral que los ciudadanos anónimos pueden alcanzar cuando deciden ejercer la libertad. English Description:D uring the town elections of a nameless city, most of its inhabitants, by their own individual choices, decide to exert their votin g rights in an unexpected way. The dirty and sneaky officials in power start making arrangements to eliminate the guilty parties; and if they cannot find any, they will have to make them up.
The protagonists of this new novel, a policeman and the woman who wa s able to maintain her sight in the novel Blindness, are samples of the moral heights that these anonymous citizens are able to re ach when they decide to exert their freedom. Saramago, a writer who has become the awakening conscience of a time blinded by the m echanisms of power, sends out an alert: There may be a day when we will have to ask, Who has signed this in my name? That day ma y very well be today.
