The Plague

Albert Camus

Penguin, 1998 - English fiction - 296 pages

Cut off from the rest of the world, living in fear, they each respond in their own way to the grim challenge of the deadly bacillus. Among them is Dr.Rieux, a humanitarian and healer, and it is through his eyes that we witness the devastating course of the epidemic. Written in 1947, just after the Nazi occupation of France, Camu's magnificent novel is also a story of courage and determination against the arbitrariness and seeming absurdity of human existence.

What people are saying

LibraryThing Review

User Review  - charlie68 - LibraryThing

I found the stories good (The Plague, The Fall and the short stories). The Myth of Sisophus tough, and the Reflections on the Gillotine interesting.

THE PLAGUE

User Review  - Kirkus

By the Frenchman who, with Sartre, shares a leading position in European literature, this is a work of considerable significance and stature, distinguished by its clarity, its composure, and above all ...

About the author

Born in 1913 in Algeria, Albert Camus was a French novelist, dramatist, and essayist. He was deeply affected by the plight of the French during the Nazi occupation of World War II, who were subject to the military's arbitrary whims. He explored the existential human condition in such works as L'Etranger (The Outsider, 1942) and Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus, 1942), which propagated the philosophical notion of the "absurd" that was being given dramatic expression by other Theatre of the Absurd dramatists of the 1950s and 1960s. Camus also wrote a number of plays, including Caligula (1944). Much of his work was translated into English. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Camus died in an automobile accident in 1960.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Plague; Essential. Penguin Series; Penguin Books
• Author: Albert Camus
• Translated by: Stuart Gilbert
• Edition: reprint
• Publisher: Penguin, 1998
• ISBN: 0140278516, 9780140278514
• Length: 296 pages