Albert Camus is one of the 20th century’s most esteemed writers, and La Peste, or The Plague (1947), is considered one of his masterpieces. Set in the North African French colony of Oran, the novel chronicles a recrudescence of the bubonic plague and the various ways in which the townspeople respond to the pestilence.
Camus most likely begun the novel in 1941, a year or so after France fell to the Nazis in the Second World War. He lived in German-run Paris at the Hotel Mercure, working as a manuscript reader as he began penning what would become The Plague. The work is often analyzed as an allegory of French resistance to the spread of the “virus” of Nazism, though Camus refused to confirm or deny such a reading. Scholar Brian Farrell explains, “Jean-Paul Sartre and other French thinkers were upset with Camus for comparing Nazism to a nonhuman phenomenon that was unrelated to human evil and therefore out of our control. But Camus’ plague was a stand-in for more than fascism. It was also a symbol for what he considered to be, more broadly, our culture of death—which he saw on all sides of the political spectrum, from the wealthy conservative establishment to the revolutionary dictatorships of the left. As a result, existential Marxists like Sartre were already primed to take issue with Camus and his novel.”
Camus was apparently unhappy with the work when he handed it to his publisher in December of 1946, writing, “[this] complete failure will teach me modesty.” He would also dispute the novel being characterized as Existentialist, even though he was friends with Sartre and other Existentialist thinkers.
The major English translation is by Stuart Gilbert, first released in 1948. Critics largely lauded the novel, though more contemporary critics focus on the lack of female or Arab characters. The reviewer for the New York Times in 1948 wrote, “’The Plague’ is a parable and sermon, and should be considered as such. The message is not the highest form of creative art, but it may be of such importance for our time that to dismiss it in the name of artistic criticism would be to blaspheme against the human spirit. M. Camus is a master of the Defoe-like narrative. Against the background of events, he creates various attitudes of human beings toward the plague, heightened by touches of intimate observation. As far as possible he isolates his people from their private lives, and thrusts them into their public situation.”
The novel has been adapted for film and the stage. In early 2020, it has surged in popularity due to COVID-19, and is often seen as relevant in terms of forebodings and insights for and into this crisis.
