“Its relevance lashes you across the face.” —Stephen Metcalf, The Los Angeles Times • “A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair.” —Roger Lowenstein, The Washington Post A haunting tale of human resilience and hope in the face of unrelieved horror, Albert Camus’ iconic novel about an epidemic ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic … African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror.
An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France’s suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.
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Existentialism meets Absurdism.
I read this for a book club I joined. The timing was perfect as we were being hit by Covid. So many of the things that happened in the book, so many of the attitudes of the characters felt very contemporary. I had seen them around me. I would have never read this on my own. I’m glad I did. It reinforced the Biblical idea that “There is nothing new …
Too close to today’s COVID
Classic Camus.
Classic
A classic that I have read twice, and am planning to read again given our current situation with COVID.
Camus has never been more relevant. Shows the varying ways we deal with sickness and dying, how that can be handled with grace, and the ways we strive and fail to do so.
ClassicCamus
It could hardly be more timely
Fitting for the pandemic. A classic.
Brilliant. Time to re-read it because history repeats itself.
With coronavirus in the world. This book could be described as the guide book. Scay.
It is simply classic, should be an obvious recommendation.
I am not sure if reading this novel during a pandemic with orders for social distancing and shelter in place was a great idea. It was written in 1947 about an attack of the plaque in a city in northern Africa, in the early part of the 1900s. The politicians initially tried to ignore what was happening. Even as truck load after truck load of …
Pestilence Then and Now Part 1
Part 2 will be published separately due to BookBub’s book review length limitations
The Plague was first published in 1946. Eleven years later, its author, Albert Camus, became the youngest person to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature. The place of this masterpiece is cemented in the canons of literary …
This book was about a bubonic plague that struck a North African town called Oran. The people in the town ignore the signs that what is going on is a plague until over 300 people are dying a day. A Dr. Rieux finally convinces the town’s authorities that there is definitely a problem and they gate off the town. No one can come in and no one can …
thought provoking
This timeless classic takes place in Camus’s homeland of Algeria. The story is a parable of the Nazi occupation of France during the war. Camus portrays the inhumanity of the Nazis through an infectious disease carried by rats that threaten the coastal city of Oran, Algeria. The novel’s most illuminating aspect is the profound force of human …
only one doctor in dark and his patience