by Pat
(Merrimack, NH, USA)
The Plague by Albert Camus is a post World War II existentialist novel that appeared in French (La Peste) in 1947 and English translation (Stuart Gilbert) in 1948. It is assuredly one of the most important books I have ever read. W
hy? First, it is an utterly masterful, engaging and spell-binding novel. But many books accomplish these things.
What is more remarkable is that here the Nobel Laureate examines the true character of humanity under the greatest duress, mortal fear, exhaustion and quarantined isolation.
While many people find it bleak and even pessimistic, I do not at all. In fact, I think its many layers and depth reveal the noblest things possible in this life.
This book develops quickly from the ominous first signs of death and ruin in a North African town called Oran: Public officials are at first stupefied and then horrified by the deaths of common rats.
Moving from denial to unrelenting suffering, the people are shut off from the rest of the world as they are forced to come to terms with an outbreak of bubonic plague.
Interminable sickness, suffering, loss, grief and the long hard work of caring for the sick and dying mingle with no prognosis for relief besides the contagion finally expending itself.
Many characters live and die anonymously, as happens every day in this impersonal world, while others