The people of Oran initially “disbelieved in pestilences”, outside of the pages of history books. Then, men, women and children start to fall ill with high fever, difficulties breathing and fatal buboes. Like people anywhere else, the Oranians are completely unprepared when rats begin emerging from the sewers to die in droves in streets and laneways. Their chief interest is in commerce, and their chief aim in life is, as they call it, ‘doing business’." Oran is a city like anywhere else, Camus’ narrator tells us: "Our citizens work hard, but solely with the object of getting rich. Its fictive chronicle of the measures taken in the city of Oran against a death-dealing disease that strikes in 1940 sometimes seemed to blur into the government announcements reshaping our lives. Rereading The Plague over these past weeks has been an uncanny experience. Sales of Albert Camus’ 1947 novel The Plague (La Peste) were spiking. The hospitals were filling up fast, as Covid-19 began to spiral out of control. Unable to return to Australia, they were in lockdown. Some weeks ago, I got an email from a student who had returned to Northern Italy over Christmas to see family.
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