![]() ![]() ![]() The Plague is Albert Camus’s most successful novel. Here in New York, in November 2001, we are better placed than we could ever have wished to feel the lash of the novel’s premonitory final sentence. And his controversial use of a biological epidemic to illustrate the dilemmas of moral contagion succeeds in ways the writer could not have imagined. His depiction of instant ex cathedra judgments-“My brethren, you have deserved it”-will be grimly familiar to us all.Ĭamus’s unwavering grasp of the difference between good and evil, despite his compassion for the doubters and the compromised, for the motives and mistakes of imperfect humanity, casts unflattering light upon the relativizers and trimmers of our own day. His definition of heroism-ordinary people doing extraordinary things out of simple decency-rings truer than we might once have acknowledged. Today, The Plague takes on fresh significance and a moving immediacy.Ĭamus’s insistence on placing individual moral responsibility at the heart of all public choices cuts sharply across the comfortable habits of our own age. Many readers will be familiar with its fable of the coming of the plague to the North African city of Oran in 194–, and the diverse ways in which the inhabitants respond to its devastating impact on their lives. Penguin Books has just published a new translation by Robin Buss of La Peste, by Albert Camus, and the text that follows is my introduction, written some months ago. ![]()
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