About - The Plague (Albert Camus)

[... and other resources on Literature and Epidemic]

Online Test based on this blog on 'The Plague':

Click here to appear in the online test. You will get auto-generated certificate with your score.

The Plague (French: La Peste) is a novel by Albert Camus, published in 1947, that tells the story of a plague sweeping the French Algerian city of Oran. It asks a number of questions relating to the nature of destiny and the human condition. The characters in the book, ranging from doctors to vacationers to fugitives, all help to show the effects the plague has on a populace.

The novel is believed to be based on the cholera epidemic that killed a large proportion of Oran's population in 1849 following French colonization, but the novel is set in the 1940s.

The Plague is considered an existentialist classic despite Camus' objection to the label.

The novel has been read as an allegorical treatment of the French resistance to Nazi occupation during World War II (Tony Judt). The Plague represents how the world deals with the philosophical notion of the Absurd, a theory that Camus himself helped to define (Wikipedia).

Camus and The Plague

In January 1941, the twenty-eight year old French writer Albert Camus began work on a novel about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of a representative modern town. It was called La Peste/The Plague, eventually published in 1947 and frequently described as the greatest European novel of the postwar period (The Book of Life) . . . Click here to read more.

Video 1:

There is no more important book to understand our times than Albert Camus's The Plague, a novel about a virus that spreads uncontrollably from animals to humans and ends up destroying half the population of a representative modern town. Camus speaks to us now not because he was a magical seer, but because he correctly sized up human nature. As he wrote: ‘Everyone has inside it himself this plague, because no one in the world, no one, can ever be immune.’ (Watching time 10 minutes)

Video 2:

An analysis of Albert Camus' The Plague. Enjoy:)! "Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky. There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise." Albert Camus, The Plague. (watching time: 25 minutes)

Video 3: (Additional / optional video resource)

Online chat with William Chafe, Alice Mary Baldwin Professor of History, and Frank Stasio

Gujarati Translation of the novel 'The Plague' by Paresh Vyas.

This translation was published in ten episodes in Gujarati daily 'Gujarat Samachar'. Paresh Vyas made the translation interesting by connecting it with contemporary corona virus covid 19 pandemic. The column 'Fact and Similarity' connects the fictional events of the novel with the real world happenings of today.

References and Additional Reading Resources:

1. Full original novel- The Plague - Archive.org

2. Block, Melissa.

'A Matter Of Common Decency': What Literature Can Teach Us About Epidemics

3. Lepore, Jill.

What Our Contagion Fables Are Really About

In the literature of pestilence, the greatest threat isn’t the loss of human life but the loss of what makes us human.

4. Schaub, Michael.

Albert Camus And The Search For Meaning In The Midst Of Ebola

5. Villuamy, Ed.

Albert Camus’ The Plague: a story for our, and all, times

The fascist ‘plague’ that inspired the novel may have gone, but 55 years after his death, many other varieties of pestilence keep this book urgently relevant . . .

6. Judt, Tony. The Hero of Our Times.

The Plague, an allegory of the German occupation of France and an attack on dogma and cowardice, established the reputation of Albert Camus. Today, argues Tony Judt, it is more relevant than ever

7. Wikipedia. The Plague

8. Vieira, Estela J.

Writing the Present, Rewriting the Plague, José Saramago’s Ensaio sobre a Cegueira and Mario Bellatin’s Salón de belleza - Yale University

9. Bill Albertini