The Plague

The Plague by Albert Camus, translated by Stuart Gilbert, 308 pages

This book is set in Oran, a coastal town in North Africa. The narrator of the book isn't revealed until the end.

The bubonic plague breaks out in the town and everyone is slow to react. Eventually, protective measures are taken in stages. The town is quarantined. The disease is passed through fleas but later becomes airborne. 

People who were visiting the town are trapped there, unable to get back to their loved ones. As a doctor tries to create a serum, people come together to fight the plague the best they can.

In Camus's Absurdist philosophy the world is meaningless and people have three alternatives. One is suicide, the second is religion or spirituality and the third is acceptance and finding your own meaning. You can see how this relates to characters in the book and what Camus thinks.

In some ways the book mirrors current events involving Covid-19 but it is different in some ways too. Circumstances may have changed but human nature hasn't. That much is true. It means there are some lessons we can draw but it also means we may not be able to totally change the outcome.

As a novel I don't give it a great review but I give it a good review as a chronicle of how people react to a disease run rampant and Camus's philosophy laid out in fiction.