The Plague

Albert Camus is a Nobel Prize–winning author perhaps best known for his existential masterpiece, The Stranger. Critics argue, however, that his epic tale The Plague is the more accomplished novel.

In the small coastal city of Oran, Algeria, rats begin rising from the filth only to die as bloody heaps in the streets. And just as mysteriously as it appeared, the rodent problem seems to vanish. Shortly after, however, many local residents experience intense fevers and then perish—victims of the unseen menace of the bubonic plague. And as life in the town comes to a halt, the survivors attempt to come to terms with their own mortality and the rigors of isolation.