On Being Economical with the Truth

In The Plague (1947), Albert Camus (1913-60) describes the ebb and flow of a fictional epidemic in the actual city of Oran, French Algeria. Figuratively, he describes the ebb and flow of evil, including falsehood, in any society at some time and every society at one time or another.

At the beginning of the novel, the plague has just appeared in the form of otherwise discreet rats suddenly appearing publicly to die of some mysterious ailment. Coincidentally, a reporter employed by a daily paper in Paris just arrived to investigate the conditions of people living in Oran’s Arab districts.

The Best We Can Do?

In his book, The Plague (1947), Albert Camus imagines how the people of the North African port city of Oran might have responded if unexpectedly stricken by that disease sometime in the 1940s. Before introducing the plague, and scrutinizing their response, Camus gives us some sense of ordinary life in this city of 200,000.

Camus: The Plague

Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913 in Mondovi, French Algeria (now Dréan, Algeria). His father died ten months later in one of the early battles of World War I. Camus and his mother then moved to a poor area of Algiers. He developed tuberculosis when he was 17.