The Plague

When Albert Camus was killed in a road accident early in 1960, the Guardian critic Anthony Hartley described his death as a ‘terrible blow to French Literature’ and to those who admire ‘… the limpid, upright mind which is reflected in all his work…’

The Plague, which won Camus the Prix des Critiques in 1947, is considered by many to have been his finest book. In an obituary notice The Times described it as ‘a carefully wrought metaphysical novel the machinery of which can be compared to a Sophoclean tragedy. The plague in question afflicted Oran in the 1940s; and on one plane the book is a straightforward narrative. Into it, however, can be read all Camus’s native anxieties, centred on the idea of plague as a symbol.’ The symbol is that of the German occupation of France against which Camus fought so heroically during the war.

This is a magnificent and impressive book which by the nature of its theme is often horrifying but never horrific, and which expresses most clearly the author’s basic humanitarianism.