Audible offers audio books for those who want to feel the emotions when they are told stories.
Sales of Albert Camus’ book “The Plague” have increased since confinement. Because each tragedy brings us back to the most symbolic works in the history of literature.
In the aftermath of the Paris attacks in November 2015, French publishers saw sales of Paris est une fête, by Ernest Hemingway, soaring. After the Notre-Dame fire, it was the turn of Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo. It’s Albert Camus’s turn to be a resounding success.
The 1957 Nobel Prize winner tells of Oran’s confinement during a plague epidemic in the 1940s. He paints a picture of what a society can become when a drama occurs and takes away its fundamental freedoms. When the first patients succumb to the disease, and the authorities decide to confine the Oran population. Among those who are fighting to fight the epidemic. Those who wish to flee it. Then others who get used to it and try to accomplish daily tasks that give meaning to their lives. and those who see it as a divine curse.
“The inhabitants, finally freed, will never forget this difficult ordeal which confronted them with the absurdity of their existence and the precariousness of the human condition.”
The plague tells a drama that is topical. Besides, like Albert Camus one wonders if the man is ready to devote himself to save his hope. Or does he think first of himself and his loved ones. Such an event can make us grow or simply expose the worst human failings.
A novel that reminds us that we are human by the simple act of reacting, waiting, loving or suffering.