Pandemic Literature
Rowan and I reluctantly came to recognize the need for this page. We have fielded so many inquiries from customers about epidemics, pandemics, plagues, and the science behind viral “jumps” between nonhuman to human species that we thought we need to put in one place the references we offer. Fear of the invisible threat extends into the past, whether history or fiction. The present fear looms large. Being human, as Robert Burns pointed out in his poem to the mousie whose life was upset by the plow, means to project the fear into the future, which explains our rich selection of plague-haunted science fiction/horror fiction. Many smart people and good writers have devoted thought and art to considering these fears, and we invite you to calm and measure your own in such good company.
The Plague, the Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays ( Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics )
The Plague, the Fall, Exile and the Kingdom, and Selected Essays ( Everyman's Library Contemporary Classics )
Once overshadowed by Sartre, Camus has proved the more durable novelist of the two. This collection of his work makes the reasons for his survival self-evident. In prose of bleak but piercing clarity, Camus cuts to the heart of each situation he describes. After The Outsider (also published in Everyman), The Plague is his most powerful novel, an account of heroic attempts to contain an epidemic in Algeria which becomes a parable of the human condition. In The Fall a Parisian lawyer tells his own tale of decline and self-discovery. Exile and the Kingdom consists of short stories which explore the existentialist predicament from various viewpoints. This volume also contains two important essays – ‘The Myth of Sisyphus’ and ‘Reflections on the Guillotine’ – which elaborate themes of mortality, meaning and transcendence developed in Camus’ fiction.