Book #112 of 2020:
The Plague by Albert Camus
This 1947 novel is pretty astonishing to encounter in 2020, in the midst of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Albert Camus was not seeking to predict the future, and his presentation of a fictional outbreak in his own decade is of course not a perfect match for COVID-19. Nevertheless, the parallels are uncomfortably striking in the logistics of the disease’s spread and belated government response, and downright uncanny in the author’s insights into a quarantined people’s psychology. As per his existentialist bona fides, Camus captures vivid impressions of characters struggling to make sense of the unfathomable disruption to their lives, as well as their complicated reactions to authority figures’ instructions on best practices.
I honestly found it all kind of exhausting to read in our present day, and I abandoned an early effort to copy down passages that seemed particularly apt after realizing I’d be quoting most of the book that way. I can’t possibly recommend it as escapism for modern audiences, even on the level of political allegory that Camus likely intended — but as literature that distills and expresses our uneasy reality, it really can’t be beat.
★★★★☆
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