- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Penguin; New Ed edition (3 Sep 1998)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0140278516
- ISBN-13: 978-0140278514
- Product Dimensions: 18 x 11 x 2.8 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 92,882 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a virulent plague. 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, andit is through his eyes that we witness the devastating course of the epidemic.
Written in 1947, just after the Nazi occupation of France, Camus's magnificent novel is also a story of courage and determination against the arbitrariness and seemingabsurdity of human existence.
About the Author
Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. He studied philosophy and then went to work in Paris as a journalist. His play Caligula appeared in 1939. He established an international reputation with books such as The Outsider, The Plague, The Just and The Fall and was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was killed in a road accident in 1960. His last novel, The First Man, unfinished at the time of his death, appeared for the first time in 1994.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 15 people found the following review helpful
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...
12 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Camus’ ‘The Plague’ is one of his definitive absurdist statements, simply stated and beautifully constructed. The main question of Camus’ philosophy was, in an atheistic world, in which there is no afterlife, can there be any sensible way of deciding how to live our lives, knowing all the while that they will inevitably end in death? Central to this is an awareness of the proximity of death. It is this idea that ‘The Plague’ plays with so brilliantly. At the time of publication, Europe was just emerging from WWII, and France from Nazi occupation, both of which had brought the reality of death much closer.
‘The Plague’ is set on the town of Oran, Algeria. The first signs of plague are when the rats emerge onto the streets and begin dying in large numbers. Throughout the book, the threat of plague becomes more real, starting as a mere idea, then as an ignorable threat, then a pandemic which eventually causes a state of emergency and finally as an enemy to be battled. Through this device, Camus’ is able to examine the behaviour of the townspeople as the threat of death becomes ever closer. In particular, he focuses on a small group of men and their interaction with the plague. There is the doctor fighting the plague (Rieux), the gangster on the run who welcomes it (Cottard), the priest (Paneloux), the reformed terrorist (Tarrou), among others, All of which serve to illustrate the variety of human responses to death.
‘The Plague’ is, for me, one of three great Absurdist works by Camus (‘The Outsider’ and ‘Exile and the Kingdom’ being the others). Of the three it is probably my least favourite, because Camus’ dry prose doesn’t especially lend itself to longer books. Nevertheless, it is a classic work of philosophy rendered into literature. It makes its point clearly and plainly, without preaching or feeling the need to illustrate its point with long monologues. A great book and a definitive twentieth century work.
‘The Plague’ is set on the town of Oran, Algeria. The first signs of plague are when the rats emerge onto the streets and begin dying in large numbers. Throughout the book, the threat of plague becomes more real, starting as a mere idea, then as an ignorable threat, then a pandemic which eventually causes a state of emergency and finally as an enemy to be battled. Through this device, Camus’ is able to examine the behaviour of the townspeople as the threat of death becomes ever closer. In particular, he focuses on a small group of men and their interaction with the plague. There is the doctor fighting the plague (Rieux), the gangster on the run who welcomes it (Cottard), the priest (Paneloux), the reformed terrorist (Tarrou), among others, All of which serve to illustrate the variety of human responses to death.
‘The Plague’ is, for me, one of three great Absurdist works by Camus (‘The Outsider’ and ‘Exile and the Kingdom’ being the others). Of the three it is probably my least favourite, because Camus’ dry prose doesn’t especially lend itself to longer books. Nevertheless, it is a classic work of philosophy rendered into literature. It makes its point clearly and plainly, without preaching or feeling the need to illustrate its point with long monologues. A great book and a definitive twentieth century work.
Mixed feelings about this one. The descriptions of the plague and the disruption to the society in Oran are well handled, but I found the characters mostly unsympathetic and/or two dimensional, ironically until near the end when the plague recedes and characters react with human relief, only for a couple of them to succumb in the disease's last ravages. Though this takes place in Oran in north Africa in the 1940s, there is no mention of the war or even of any African inhabitants, and the events indeed almost seem to take place in a time bubble - but perhaps that is, in part, the point. 3.5/5
Most Recent Customer Reviews
An allegorical tale of aching compassion for the human condition
Albert Camus's allegorical tale of a community cut off from the outside world is a work of aching compassion for the human condition. Read more
Published on 27 Mar 2009 by Trevor Coote
Dull
Despite a promising start the book runs out of steam after 100 pages and spends the next 200 pages going in circles. Read more
Published on 3 Feb 2008 by Ibrahim Ali
Fascinating novel
Apparently, it is an allegory of the German occupation of France in WWII, but I read it as an account of what life is like as a human being dealing with a catastrophe like plague -... Read more
Published on 3 Jan 2005 by M. D. Marikar
Changed Perspectives from Threat of Imminent Death
The Plague is about love, exile, and suffering as illuminated by living around death.
What is the meaning of life? Read more
Published on 3 Aug 2004 by Donald Mitchell
Unsettling allegory of holocaust
The allegory of The Plague to the holocaust has been well documented in literature studies and it remains an important text on that part of European history. Read more
Published on 1 Feb 2003 by Alex Magpie
GREATEST NOVEL : METAPHORS AND SOLIDARITY
Camus reached fame with his elaborations about the concept of the absurd (the purposeless search of the meaning of existence in a universe void of any)in three works: The Stranger,... Read more
Published on 7 Nov 2002 by Luciano Lupini
Plague as a bonder of humanity
A detailed look at how ordinary people respond to extreme trauma. Central character Dr Rieux narrates his diary of events in a little community stricken by plague. Read more
Published on 8 Jun 2002
Ennui among the dying
Having recently read Jose Saramago's 'Blindness', which is frequently compared to this book, I felt compelled to read it. Read more
Published on 11 April 1999
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