I read this:

*What Blind People Wish Sighted People Knew About Blindness by Harry Martin.*

These next two are fiction but they have main characters who are blind:

*The Manual of Darkness by Enrique De Heriz.*

*The Best Max Carrados Detective Stories by Ernest Bramah and E. F. Bleiler.*

During the past 5-6 years I went through immense physical and emotional pain and suffering as a result of my eye-related chronic illness which made me go blind. It's been by far the worst and most challenging period of my life. There was one particularly "dark hour", in spring of 2020. I had to undergo a very difficult surgery. Despite my countless previous surgeries, I was extremely scared of this one because of the risks involved. And although things looked good at first, a very tragic incident occurred in the second night after the surgery. I won't bore you with all the details but suffice to say that I genuinely wished to die in the weeks after that incident. I was experiencing a huge amount of physical pain in my eye but the bottomless despair and depression were even worse. In this time of utter misery, there were exactly two things that saved me and carried me through.

The first was my wife. She was a true angel and I'm so thankful I had her by my side.

The second was a novel... an audiobook, to be precise. My wife recommended it to me and because I had to spend many lonely hours in the hospital, I asked her to download it for me.

The novel is called *Pachinko* and it was written by Min Jin Lee (a Korean-American writer). Disclaimer: the story is not about blindness or blind people. So, if you're only looking for that, it won't be your cup of tea. But I still wanted to mention it here because it helped me so much through those incredibly dark days and weeks.

Basically, the book tells a multi-generational story of Korean immigrants in Japan during the 20th century. What I love about it is that it is deeply melancholic and heavy-hearted. Not depressing but contemplative and at times very tragic. It feels like one of those Russian folk songs turned into a novel. Although the characters are very diverse, it eventually becomes clear that they all struggle with their own challenges and hardships in life. They all try, in their ways, to be happy and successful and some of them succeed... but there's this Buddhist attitude of "all life is suffering" that permeates the novel. It never feels like a corny sob story, though and to me, that is proof for the greatness of Min Jin Lee's writing (btw. she received the Booker Prize for this novel).

If you're the kind of person who likes to listen to sad music when you're sad because it helps you feel better, you feel enjoy this book. I could really identify with the characters and their stories and somehow, the genuine, unfiltered and calm melancholy made it easier to bear by own pain and suffering.