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The Plague by Albert Camus: Book Cover

    The Plague by Albert Camus, Erroll McDonald (Editor), Stuart Gilbert (Translator), Stuart Gilbert (Translator)

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    (Paperback - Reissue)

    Reader Rating: (27 ratings)

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    Synopsis

    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.

    Annotation

    An epidemic serves a telling symbol for the Nazi occupation of France, and, by extension, for human existence as a whole.

    Books of the Century; New York Times review August 1948 - Stephen Spender

    The Plague is parable and sermon, and should be considered as such. The Plague stands or falls by its message. The message is not the highest form of creative art, but it may be of such importance for our time that to dismiss it in the name of artistic criticism would be to blaspheme against the human spirit.

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    Customer Reviews

    An amazing bookby rmishou

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    November 18, 2008: Camus' classic is a must read. As much great literature does, this book works on several levels. It is a clear allegory about the dangers of fascism. The plague begins to appear with the dramatic increase in dead rats. The dangers are largely ignored until things have worsened and it is too late to stop the calamity. Couple this allegory with astute insight into the psychology of human nature and Camus' work borders on amazing. The town seems to resign themselves to their fate, barely fighting, as if already defeated. This book does not fall back to a typical medical thriller where the source must be found and millions are saved at the last minute. Instead, Camus has people die and react to the indiscriminate nature of the disease, killing young and old, rich and poor. As expected there are those who profit from disaster and those you have the money to buy the slowly disappearing food, but Camus resists the urge to cheapen his book with tricks and fabricated action scenes. This books is an intense, existential study of the human psyche in the face of a natural disaster or, allegorically, a dangerous, oppressive government bent on killing individuality and imagination. Camus leaves the reader with the chilling reminder that the plague can lie dormant for years and return at any time.

    The Plagueby FocoProject

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    October 27, 2008: I?ll be forward about the fact that I am about to give this book a review it does not deserve. I am aware enough to know that even if I did not enjoy this book as much as it should have, the literary work is still very good.

    The story itself interesting, dealing with a small town in Algeria (Northern Africa) which finds itself under the sudden punishment of the Plague. At first it is the dead rats that appear on the streets, eventually people succumbing and soon the gates to the city are closed and this community is forced to be isolated from the rest of the world until the malady retreats.

    There is absolutely nothing wrong with the subject matter or the characters, but rather, to me, the way it was written was not the most approachable of ways. Instead of allowing us to make a true connection with the characters, the author opts to narrate this almost in a journalistic fashion, which gives us a lot of facts from a detached point of view. The main character himself, who serves as the narrator, explains that this is how it will be done from the beginning and while it is effective, I found it less enjoyable than if the author had allowed us to become more personal with the characters.

    The vocabulary used here is also above par, which makes it a bit slower reading, with deliciously stringed together sentences that somehow do not entirely lose their magic in the translation from French. So, if my review seems a bit lower than it should be, keep in mind that it was only because I personally found it to not be my type of reading. Some of you may think this book is much better and I would not think you wrong.


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