The Plague by Albert Camus is an extraordinary odyssey into the darkness
and absurdity of human existence. 'On the morning of April 16, Dr Rieux
emerged from his consulting-room and came across a dead rat in the middle
of the landing.' It starts with the rats. Vomiting blood, they die in their
hundreds, then in their thousands. When the rats are all gone, the citizens
begin to fall sick. Like the rats, they too die in ever greater numbers.
The authorities quarantine the town. Cut off, the terrified townspeople
must face this horror alone. Some resign themselves to death or the whims
of fate. Others seek someone to blame or dream of revenge. One is
determined to escape. But a few, like stoic Dr Rieux, stand together to
fight the terror. A monstrous evil has entered their lives but they will
never surrender to it. They will resist the plague. 'A matchless fable of
fear, courage and cowardice' Independent Albert Camus was born in Algeria
in 1913. He studied philosophy in Algiers and then worked in Paris as a
journalist. He was one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance
movement and, after the War, established his international reputation as a
writer. His books include The Plague, The Just and The Fall, and he won the
Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. Camus was killed in a road accident in
1960.