By: Albert Camus

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.The story of the affect of the bubonic plague and the Algerians will to survive.

Review by Albert Camus ((unknown)): "[It marks] the passage from an attitude of solitary revolt to the recognition of a community whose struggles must be shared."
Review by Stephen Spender (New York Times Book Review, 08/01/1948): "'The Plague' is parable and sermon and should be considered as such. To criticize it by standards which apply to most fiction would be to risk condemning it for moralizing, which is exactly where it is strongest....What we have to judge is the urgency, for us, of M. Camus' morality. It seems to me to be of so much urgency that we would be wrong to ask how much significance people may attach to it tomorrow. There are certain things which need to be said now, without care for the future, and these are said, even with naoveti, in 'The Plague.'"
Review (New York Herald Tribune (1924-1966), 1948): "[W]ho will not see in it a parable of the condition of all mankind, especially during the recent war?"
Review by David L. Kirp (Nation, 05/04/1998): "What resonates from the novel is how good people respond in terrible times--not by allowing themselves to be paralyzed or blaming the diseased for their affliction but by acting to contain the harm."