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.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #114059 in Books
• Published on: 1998-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 304 pages

Review
Philosopher and Nobel literature laureate (the youngest ever), Camus had an unparalleled ability to combine narrative with ideas. In this novel he recreates allegorically the German occupation of France in inimitable prose. A blast against the suffocating power of social consensus, Camus' parable of an Algerian town in the grip of a scourge and cut off from the world by it, questions the legitimacy of religion and morality. This is a classic that transcends boundaries. (Kirkus UK)

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, its scrupulous classicism. The story focuses on the outbreak of plague in Oran in the year 194-, as it reaches epidemic proportions. The author traces the crescendo of human emotions from panic to the almost unendurable agony of isolation and death. The argument extends beyond the physical impact of the plague into metaphysical terrain with the realization that each one of us carries within us the plague of injustice, of inhumanity...Distinguished by the precision, the purity of its writing, the dignity of its presentation. It may command critical rather than popular attention. (Kirkus Reviews)

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.