The plague novel you need to read is by Bachmann, not Camus
In Ingeborg Bachmann’s Malina, the plague isn’t a biological virus, it doesn’t cause lockdowns, but it is killing us
by Lyndsey Stonebridge for PSYCHE
(The Austrian poet Ingeborg Bachmann on the streets of the Parione quarter in Rome. Spring 1954. Photo by Herbert List/Magnum)
‘In the beginning, everyone was reading The Plague by Albert Camus. The arrival of a new age of extremes has been good for mid-20th-century writers. Camus joined Hannah Arendt and George Orwell back in the bestseller lists to remind us that, when freedoms are locked down and mass death is on the horizon, what we really need is the moral clarity of good writing.’
READ THE FULL ARTICLE HERE
