Mid-April, in the North African trading port Oran, folks were dismayed by rats

rushing out of their holes and dying in droves in the open, an ill omen that was

soon confirmed. In two weeks, Dr. Rieux had his first case of the bubonic

plague. His patient, the doorman, died in two days.

During the ensuing months, as the town took ever more draconian actions against

the staggering clamity, Dr. Rieux worked doggedly through the darkest hours

which at times felt like a never-ending defeat. He was joined by people like

Joseph Grand, an ascetic city clerk, Tarrou, a man who tried to live a saintly

life, Rambert, a reporter who gave up escaping to his wife, and Father Paneloux,

the learned and militant Jesuit priest. Each fought his own heroic battles and

had a story to tell.

For Dr. Rieux, one could not save lives and in the same breath understand the

grand scheme of things and had to attend to the more urgent. Abandoned by his

wife, Grand was obsessed with arriving at a perfect sentence which people would

look at and say "hats off!" Tarrou had broken with his father and tried to do no

harm or, in his own words, to "keep vigilance." Rambert almost succeeded in

leaving behind the doomed town before changing his mind, thinking "if he went

away, he would be shamed of himself and that would embarrass his relations with

the woman he loved" and "there was nothing shameful in preferring happiness but

it may be shameful to be happy by oneself." Father Paneloux first preached that

the scourge was divine punishment for people's "criminal indifference" to God

but after witnessing the death throes of an innocent child, he resolved that

there were no half measures in faith and, on his own death bed, saw calling a

doctor illogical for a priest.

Other impressive characters included Cottard the smuggler profiteering from the

collective misery, who as the plague receded went mad, and a 75-year old

asthmatic Spaniard, a former draper who quit working at age 50 and intended to

live to an advanced age.

I don't know how popular are heavy tales of epidemics but the author's elegant

prose carried the day, even for such a sombre subject. I know next to nothing

about French in which the novel was first written. English borrowed much from

that language, I understand, but if there was still any gap, the translator

Stuart Gilbert did a wonderful job in bridging it with delightful words and

phrases. I took 40 pages of notes of the 272-page book. (Compare with The

Alchemist which was 208 pages long and for which I took seven pages of notes.)