| View Larger Image | The Plague | Paperbackby Albert Camus (Author), Stuart Gilbert (Author)
| List Price: | $13.95 | | Price: | $10.04 | | You Save: | $3.91 (28%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Vintage | | Edition: | 2nd printingnd Edition | | Page Count: | 320 Pages | | Publication Date: | May 07, 1991 | | Sales Rank: | 8,423th |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780679720218
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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EDITORIAL REVIEWS |
Product Description
A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature. |
Amazon.com Review
The Nobel prize-winning Albert Camus, who died in 1960, could not have known how grimly current his existentialist novel of epidemic and death would remain. Set in Algeria, in northern Africa, The Plague is a powerful study of human life and its meaning in the face of a deadly virus that sweeps dispassionately through the city, taking a vast percentage of the population with it. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.5 based on 160 reviews)
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brilliant classic novel by Robert W. Smith (Virginia, USA)  5 Stars
June 13, 2009
This novel, written by the great existentialist Albert Camus, is one of the greatest novels that I have ever read. It is far better than even The Stranger, also by Camus, or even Graham Greene's The Heart of the Matter. It is the story of a cluster of characters, each in his own way quite well developed. Of course, the physician stands out as the main protagonist. They reside in a city that is quarantined to prevent the spread of a plague that, while tragic in its own right, brings the characters to new self-understanding and leads each to new behavioral highs or lows. It is great reading, it is not too long so it can be read in a day or so, and it is sure to offer the reader many opportunities for self-examination (which, I found, takes longer than reading the book). I give this an A+ and it is among the works that I most highly recommend!
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The Greatest Novel of the 20th Century? by Peter Kobs (Battle Creek, MI, USA) 5 Stars
June 11, 2009
Albert Camus' magnificent novel, "The Plague," is the only book I've read a dozen times. This month, I'm reading it yet again with ever-increasing respect for the author's skill and radical commitment to honesty. Only George Orwell comes close, in my opinion.
SO WHAT'S THE BIG DEAL, ANYWAY? "The Plague" was first published in 1947, just two years after the close of World War II. The storyline is relatively simple:
-- Thousands of rats start dying in Oran, Algeria, an ugly seaside city that was then part of the French empire. (Note: A real plague scare swept Oran in 1944.)
-- The disease quickly spreads to human beings, who begin dying in ever-greater numbers.
-- To prevent a wider epidemic, the local government closes down all routes to the outside world.
-- Inside this grim, pestilential setting we witness the best and worst of human nature.
-- More importantly, the novel raises huge questions about morality, God, fairness, praxis and human suffering.
Unlike lesser writers, Camus doesn't offer up any easy answers. He never accepted the label "Existentialist" and his work certainly can't be forced into a box, literary or philosophical. And no matter what your high school English teacher said, "The Plague" isn't an allegory about fascism, atheism, nihilism or any other "ism." It's far more ambitious, and far less formulaic, than any allegory.
In his own powerful way, Camus forces us to confront the most uncomfortable question of all: What if life really is meaningless? What if all of our suffering, joys, effort and achievements count for nothing in the grand scheme of things? Simply put, what if there is no "grand scheme of things"?
Each character in "The Plague" is both a real person and a symbol for something deeply perplexing about the human condition. They are living contraditions who slowly tear apart the false fabric of conventional wisdom.
Our lead character is Dr. Bernard Rieux. He's a humble champion of human dignity but also a fatalist without much faith in anything - except practical action and perseverance. On the other side of the spectrum is Father Paneloux, a militant Jesuit priest of Oran who insists the plague is God's punishment on the local population. Paneloux is a classic example of dead faith masquerading as certainty. He reveals the emptiness of "true believers" who abandon humility in favor of arrogance.
Even the novel's strangest characters pose difficult questions: Monsieur Cottard begins the novel by trying to commit suicide, but then finds new reason to live as death sweeps across the city. Why? What does this signify about hope in the face of doom? Other characters are by turns greedy, loving, selfish, delusional and even comical (e.g., the man whose hobby is spitting on cats). The one thing you won't find in "The Plague" is a neat, tidy ending that resolves everything for you.
As a Christian, I find myself coming back to Camus often because he challenges my faith and understanding of the world. He not only "overturns the applecart" of simplistic theology, he sets it on fire and throws it off a cliff. In fact, Camus' radical honesty reminds me of a certain Jewish carpenter who uttered these words just before he was executed: "I came to bear witness to the truth." But what is truth?, asked Pontius Pilate.
Jesus (like Camus 2,000 years later) remained silent, refusing to answer that question. The implication is clear -- at least for me.
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The Plague by J. Michel  2 Stars
May 31, 2009
The book was old, but readable, I felt disappointed by the condition of the book.
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Big problems inspire big questions by Montana Max (Bigtown, Montana, USA)  4 Stars
May 27, 2009
I enjoyed this novel much more than The Stranger. Camus takes more time to ponder the deeper questions of existence, arriving at an answer both very French and very admirable. Our protagonist, Dr Rieux, works against a raging and frightening disease, not always knowing quite why. The Why is worked out with the novel, however, not at "the end." It's impossible to read this book without realizing why the French invented the Medecins Sans Frontieres in 1971; they see compassion as a human duty. Yet Christians looking for a fight won't find one here.
Father Paneloux, the impassioned Christian character, preachs a popular sermon saying that the Plague is God's punishment for the wickedness of the people of Oran. A traditional and increasingly vocal view among Fundamentalists (and I don't mean just Christians). Yet even though Paneloux condemns others, he selflessly works for them. Yet after the priest's own sudden death, Camus avoids any direct condemnation of religion. Instead, in the section where Tarrou questions the doctor about his beliefs we read: "(Father) Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its excellence.....[Rieux said that] if he believed in an all-powerful God he would cease curing the sick and leave that to Him. But one no in the world believed in a God of that sort, no, not even Paneloux, who believed that he believed in such a God. And this was proved by the fact that no one ever threw himself on Providence completely. Anyhow, in this respect Rieux believed himself to be on the right road-in fighting against creation as he found it." (The Plague p.119, 120)
This is no straw man argument, Paneloux represents a very mainstream Christian argument about theodicy. Camus's The Plague is a great novel for many reasons, only one of which it does NOT condemn Christians as the "enemy.'
Still, it is a middling-long novel, and a bit dreary at points. And as a stylist, the radical Camus is, well, let's face it, a bourgeois. But this is a novel rich in philosophy; by which I mean, less about pat answers than interesting questions. Worth reading and rereading.
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There's a light that never goes out. by Derya Tambay (Istanbul) 5 Stars
April 22, 2009
I found this book to be a rich account of human nature, and his struggle for meaning... and an interesting ethical text questioning the relation of goodness and religion. I understand that some find this a slow-paced, dark read but after reading The Stranger, witnessing Camus' main characters reach for hope in friendship and solidarity in this novel is almost refreshing. And it is well worth reading for the masterful character study alone.
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