Literature & Film in Lockdown, Part 4: Camus, "The Plague"

Episode Topic: Camus, "The Plague"

Albert Camus’s novel "The Plague" (La peste), published in 1947, tells the story of a group of characters living through an outbreak of contagious disease in the 1940s, in the Algerian city of Oran, then part of France. There was no such outbreak, Camus never lived through a plague, and the novel has usually been understood as an allegory for the human condition. However, Camus’s plague is so vividly imagined and perceptive that it will immediately strike any reader in 2020 with its startling insight into what living through a pandemic feels like at all of its different stages.

Featured Speakers: 

• Barry McCrea, Professor of English and the Donald R. Keough Family Professor of Irish Studies at the University of Notre Dame
• Lisa Caulfield, the Director of the Notre Dame Global Center at Kylemore Abbey

Read this episode's recap over on the University of Notre Dame's open online learning community platform, ThinkND:  go.nd.edu/440965.

This podcast is a part of the  London Book Club Series titled “Literature & Film in Lockdown".

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