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The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it.
Book Description
A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
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First Sentence
The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194-at Oran. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
The unusual events described in this chronicle occurred in 194-at Oran. Read the first page
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Concordance
Browse Sample PagesConcordance
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
An exceptional novel, that works both at a literal and allegorical level,
By Nathan Andersen "film lover, philosophy profe... (Florida) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Plague, The (Paperback)
Whether you are interested in a compelling story or an existential fable, the Plague is one of the most important fictional works of the century. More profound than the Stranger, because it presents the dilemma of the protagonist in a very different way. In the Stranger, the dilemma is that you've got to make choices, and whether you choose or don't you've made a choice, and the stranger alternates between evasion and arbitrariness until he discovers, almost too late (when his choices are confined to the limits of a prison cell) that choice matters. In the Plague, the issue is that there is no final exit: all you can say for sure is that here you are, quarantined on the earth (as the characters are quarantined in their village). Nothing you do may ultimately matter, and no one is going to come from outside to solve your problems. In spite of this, the hero finds reasons to go on living, to improve the lives of a few in small ways. It's worth comparing this novel to Saramago's "Blindness" -- the latter is perhaps more inventive in its style, but I find the Plague a more ultimately satisfying novel. There is nothing extraneous here.
5.0 out of 5 stars
"A town thrown back upon itself",
By
This review is from: Plague, The (Paperback)
In the 21st century we expect to control and conquer disease. How can we imagine the horror of "The Plague?" Albert Camus gave us a chilling story, set in the Algerian city of Oran. First the rats bleed and die, and then people begin to fall sick with the dreaded bubonic plague. As the weekly death toll rises, officials seal off the city and the long exile begins.The hospitals fill up and public buildings are requisitioned for makeshift plague wards. Quarantine camps are established. The usual burial arrangements are inadequate so the corpses are eventually interred in communal graves without the presence of mourners. The narrator is unnamed until the end. The central character is Dr. Rieux who goes about his rounds of caring and organizing, somehow able to carry on in the absurd atmosphere of death, exile, deprivation and bereavement. "There lay certitude, there in the daily round...The thing was to do your job as it should be done." The other characters find their own way of carrying on -- the civil servant in pursuit of the perfect opening sentence for his book, the priest preaching God's flail of retribution, the journalist on assignment when the city is was sealed and now frantic to escape to his wife, the fearful criminal living for the first time in a community of fear, the vacationer sharing his passion for collective responsibility with Dr. Rieux one starry night. Of course The Plague is about an epidemic only on its most superficial level. Camus, Algerian-born himself, was a committed anti-totalitarian fresh from the French Resistance in 1947 when THE PLAGUE was published. His characters act out his personal philosophy in the absurdist 1940s world: they keep doing the right thing while believing that it won't make a difference, while knowing that to do anything else is to be complicit in the wickedness of the world. The book is easy to read but much more challenging to think about, which makes a good case for the reading. Linda Bulger, 2008
4.0 out of 5 stars
Decisions...,
By M. B. Alcat "Curiosity killed the cat, but sa... (Los Angeles, California) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Plague, The (Paperback)
This book isn't overly engaging, it is somewhat shocking at times, and its prose is probably too dry. Despite that, I highly recommend it to you... Why?. Well, the reason is simple. The plot of "The Plague" is merely a way of understanding something that has to do with our everyday life, and the way we live it.Succinctly, the story begins when a plague strikes the North-African town of Oran. People at first try to ignore the clues that show that something bad is happening. When they cannot help but recognize that things are seriously wrong, a quarantine is declared. For those inside the walls of Oran, reality changes: death is omnipresent, and loneliness and despair, feelings they must confront. Different people react in diverse ways to the same reality, and we get to know about them through the narrator of this book, that also happens to be one of the protagonists. The real question that most of the persons in Oran ask themselves sooner or later is whether is it worthwhile to fight against the plague, when the outcome in that unfair war is almost certain death... I won't give you the answers they find, if any. For that, you need to read the book... However, I can tell you Albert Camus' opinion. Camus (1913-1960) thought that it is in the fighting against evil that mankind finds its greatness (and maybe justification, who knows), even if we face what might seem at first sight a desperate situation. In a way, I think that for Camus the plague was in this case an allegory of evil, and our attitude against it. That evil changes faces, but always reappears, and it is again time to make choices, and decide what kind of attitude we will take. It is only in the right decisions that we will find the meaning we were searching for. Again, recommended... Belen Alcat
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