The Algerian city Oran is struck by a strange plague, a deadly disease that rapidly spreads. The city is sealed off form the outside world, it’s gates closed, and we then follow a number of people as they try to find a way of dealing with life under these extreme circumstances. Most end up devoting their time to battling the plague: seeing to the sick, administrating quarantine camps, trying to find a working cure. One of the key statements of this book is “There’s more to admire than despise in people”.

The book is told almost with the plague and the mood of the city itself as main characters. It’s dramaturgy is the course of the epidemic from beginning to end, rather than following individual storylines. It’s skilfully done and makes for a novel that is both polyphonic and kept together.

In my opinion, however, two major factors are flawing this book.

First of all, I just can’t look past the fact that no women, blacks, arabs or berbers are doing ANYTHING worth mentioning in this book. In a work that has a clear ambition to span over different classes and backgrounds, where the point that your worth is not decided by where you come from is indeed a major one, the fact that virtually every character is a French man is pretty hard to swallow. You can’t really write it off as “a product of it’s time” either, as one of the main characters is shown as a really upstanding guy for refusing to speak to a journalist who won’t write a story about the oppression of the arab population. Tunnel vision like this in an author is something I have a problem overlooking.

And secondly: it’s boring as all hell. The fact that the progress of the disease and it’s effect on Oran’s population is leading the way is no excuse to be shallow, dull and uninterested in telling a story. There are no suprises whatsoever in this book (indeed, the revelation of the narrator’s identity has to be one of the biggest anti-climaxes I can recall in a book), and all the storylines are extremely predictable. Some people die, some survive, one goes crazy (just the one you knew would) and I don’t really care which.

Big ideas, interesting structure, but pretty darn disappointing. ( )

Rats start dying in the town of Oran, soon after people start to fall ill with symptons like the plague. The whole city is then cut off to contain the disease, leaving the inhabitants and visitors to the town to come to terms with their confinement and the possibility of their own death. ( )

In relation to timeline The Plague is simple. It covers the duration of a bubonic plague. The story begins with the death of rats. First, a few rats are found here and there until they are everywhere; dying by the thousands all across the Algerian city of Oran. Then, the plague increases in intensity and starts killing hundreds of people until finally, colder temperatures arrive and the plague is mercifully over. But, The Plague on a philosophical level is much deeper than the spread of a disease. Dr. Bernard Rieux is a doctor trying to save the community of Oran from the ravages of a plague. Even though Dr. Rieux patiently tries to care for everyone in the makeshift infirmaries most of his patients die. It appears to be a losing battle. Soon it is obvious the bigger question on Dr. Bernard Rieux's mind concerns humanity. For him, the struggle between good and evil is all apparent. He observes how people react to the disease, are influenced by the disease, and are changed by the disease. In the end, the whole point of the didactic lesson for Dr. Rieux is that we all need someone. Rieux's biggest discovery is that he is content to continue the crusade against any disease, any suffering, any pain or death. ( )

A very influential book. I remember the pleasure of reading this book while studying for A levels and trying to understand its wider significance. ( )

I liked it's beauty, it's honesty in dealing with the human condition without deifying or celebrating any part of it. I liked it's persistent unwillingness to look for any real meaning to life and man except the contradicting meanings of each of the individual characters. I liked the assembly of characters but most of all the beauty, the beauty in the description and the phrases, the beauty in all the ugly things. ( )