Albert Camus' The Plague.

 

As I mentioned in an earlier blog post, most of the books I'll read in December will be books that I've read before. I also mentioned in that post that one of the books I'll re-read this month will be Albert Camus' The Plague.

I last read The Plague in April, 2020, during the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic. According to wikipedia, I wasn't the only one reading the novel at that time - the novel's British publisher Penguin Classics reported struggling to keep up with demand for copies of the book:
"Sales in Italy tripled and it became a top-ten bestseller during its nationwide lockdown.Penguin Classics' editorial director said 'it couldn’t be more relevant to the current moment' and Camus's daughter Catherine said that the message of the novel had newfound relevance in that 'we are not responsible for coronavirus but we can be responsible in the way we respond to it'."

While the reading of the novel during a global pandemic was certainly relevant, it's not exactly what I'd call Christmas reading. Yes, the novel is a masterpiece, but reading the novel doesn't give one an abundance of hope and joy that might be associated with yuletide reading choices.

Camus published the novel in 1947 - the story takes place in the French Algerian city of Oran sometime in the 1940s. No exact date is given. The photo at the beginning of this post is a view of Oran in 1943 , taken from the above mentioned wikipedia article.