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Cover of The Plague by Albert Camus

The Plague

Albert Camus

  • 278 pages · about 5 hours
  • First published 1947
  • 280 editions
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1 About this book

In the 1940s, in the French Algerian port of Oran, rats begin to come out into the streets and die in great numbers. Then people fall ill. Doctor Bernard Rieux and a colleague conclude that it is plague, and after the authorities hesitate, the whole city is placed under quarantine. The novel, told as a sober chronicle, follows the months that follow through Rieux, who simply keeps doing his work, and through the people around him, each of whom answers the epidemic and the separation from the outside world in a different way. Albert Camus published it in 1947.

  • Medicine
  • Romance literature
  • Classics
  • Psychology
  • Psychological fiction
  • Plague
  • Epidemics
  • Medical

2 What to expect

A novel of a city under quarantine: plague breaks out in an Algerian port in the 1940s, and a doctor and a few others keep working against it. Told as a calm, almost clinical chronicle, it is about separation, fear and what decency means when suffering has no purpose, and it is often read as an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France. The pace is steady and undramatic, with reflection outweighing action.

Good for readers who want: a philosophical novel, life under quarantine, and a serious, reflective classic.

3 About Albert Camus

1913–1960

Albert Camus ( kam-OO; French: ; 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, writer, and political activist. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history, and the first laureate in literature born in Africa. His works include The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall and The Rebel. Camus was born in French Algeria to pied-noir parents.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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