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The Plague

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The Plague by Albert Camus A haunting tale of human resilience in the face of unrelieved horror, Camus' novel about a bubonic plague ravaging the people of a North African coastal town is a classic of twentieth-century literature.
The Plague, the Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays by Albert Camus (Book Jacket Status: Jacketed) From one of the most brilliant and influential thinkers of the twentieth century-two novels, six short stories, and a pair of essays in a single volume. In both his essays and his fiction, Albert Camus (1913--1960) de-ployed his lyric eloquence in defense against despair, providing an affirmation of the brave assertion of humanity in the face of a universe devoid of order or meaning. The Plague-written in 1947 and still profoundly relevant-is a riveting tale of horror, survival, and resilience in the face of a devastating epidemic. The Fall (1956), which takes the form of an astonishing confession by a French lawyer in a seedy Amsterdam bar, is a haunting parable of modern conscience in the face of evil. The six stories of Exile and the Kingdom (1957) represent Camus at the height of his narrative powers, masterfully depicting his characters-from a renegade missionary to an adulterous wife -at decisive moments of revelation. Set beside their fictional counterparts, Camus's famous essays "The Myth of Sisyphus" and "Reflections on the Guillotine" are all the more powerful and philosophically daring, confirming his towering place in twentieth-century thought.

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Albert Camus Combines biographical information with critical analyses of Albert Camus, with essays commenting on Camus' use of ethics and imagery.
The Cambridge Companion to Camus Albert Camus is one of the iconic figures of twentieth-century French literature, one of France's most widely read modern literary authors and one of the youngest winners of the Nobel Prize for Literature. As the author of L'Etranger and the architect of the notion of 'the Absurd' in the 1940s, he shot to prominence in France and beyond. His work nevertheless attracted hostility as well as acclaim and he was increasingly drawn into bitter political controversies, especially the issue of France's place and role in the country of his birth, Algeria. Most recently, postcolonial studies have identified in his writings a set of preoccupations ripe for revisitation. Situating Camus in his cultural and historical context, this 2007 Companion explores his best-selling novels, his ambiguous engagement with philosophy, his theatre, his increasingly high-profile work as a journalist and his reflection on ethical and political questions that continue to concern readers today.
Critical Insights: Albert Camus: Space/Place and Home: Prefiguring Contemporary Political and Religious Discourse in Albert Camus’s The Plague This volume offers original contributions, while also reprinting a sampling of some of the more trenchant earlier essays about the man and his work. Essays discuss the reception of Camus's oeuvre, themes that have inspired discussion, points of continuing controversy, and Camus's own reaction to his hostile critics. Also discussed is his most famous work, The Stranger.
Critical Insights: The Plague Considered a classic of the existentialist movement (though Camus objected to this label), scholars have long engaged with the novel’s absurdist elements. On one level a simple tale of the universal, ultimately unwinnable, struggle against death, The Plague also explores individual moral courage, secular and religious, in the face of overwhelming tragedy. As an advocate for personal integrity despite an absence of religious or philosophical meaning, Camus became a spokesman for the generation that had witnessed the Holocaust and other horrors of World War II.
The Plague
The Plague (La Peste) Novel by Albert Camus, 1947

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Albert Camus, Journalist (52:07) Far from embracing the existentialism he is often associated with, Albert Camus was a social activist and staunch believer in the positive potential of the human race. In this program, excerpts from private film archives and a variety of interviews document Camus’s career as a journalist concerned with social justice. From his early years in Algeria writing about poverty and oppression to the underground newspaper he edited for the French Resistance, the video reveals how Camus’s journalism informed the themes and style of The Stranger, The Plague, and The Myth of Sisyphus.

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