# States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic - Hardcover

by **Alice Kaplan** (Author), **Laura Marris** (Author)

**_States of Plague_ examines Albert Camus's novel as a palimpsest of pandemic life, an uncannily relevant account of the psychology and politics of a public health crisis.**

As one of the most discussed books of the COVID-19 crisis, Albert Camus's classic novel _The Plague_ has become a new kind of literary touchstone. Surrounded by terror and uncertainty, often separated from loved ones or unable to travel, readers sought answers within the pages of Camus's 1947 tale about an Algerian city gripped by an epidemic. Many found in it a story about their own lives--a book to shed light on a global health crisis.

In thirteen linked chapters told in alternating voices, Alice Kaplan and Laura Marris hold the past and present of _The Plague_ in conversation, discovering how the novel has reached people in their current moment. Kaplan's chapters explore the book's tangled and vivid history, while Marris's are drawn to the ecology of landscape and language. Through these pages, they find that their sense of Camus evolves under the force of a new reality, alongside the pressures of illness, recovery, concern, and care in their own lives. Along the way, Kaplan and Marris examine how the novel's original allegory might resonate for a new generation of readers who have experienced a global pandemic. They describe how they learned to contemplate the skies of a plague spring, to examine the body politic and the politics of immunity.

Both personal and eloquently written, _States of Plague_ uncovers for us the mysterious way a novel can imagine the world during a crisis and draw back the veil on other possible futures.

### Author Biography

**Alice Kaplan** is the Sterling Professor of French and Director of the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale. She is the author of several books, including _French Lessons_, _Looking for "The Stranger,"_ and _Dreaming in French_, also published by the University of Chicago Press_._ She has been a finalist for both the National Book Critics Circle Award and the National Book Award. She lives in Guilford, Connecticut. **Laura Marris** is a writer and translator. Her recent translations include Albert Camus's _The Plague_, Louis Guilloux's _Blood Dark_, and Geraldine Schwarz's _Those Who Forget_. Her first solo-authored book, _The Age of Loneliness_, is forthcoming. She lives in Buffalo, New York.

**Number of Pages:** 152

**Dimensions:** 0.72 x 8.77 x 5.84 IN

**Publication Date:** October 31, 2022

## Details

- **Price:** 20.0 USD
- **Vendor:** Books by splitShops
- **Type:** Books
- **Tags:** Books by splitShops, Shopify Collective

## Variants

| Variant | Price | Available |
|---------|-------|-----------|
| Default Title | 20.00 USD | In stock |

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- States of Plague: Reading Albert Camus in a Pandemic - Hardcover

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