The next up on my reading of the 306 greatest books is The Plague by Albert Camus. The book can be found on the Observer and My Book Lists.
Despite this book being added to a 100 greatest books list that was compiled in 2003, it is more perfectly timed for right now than any other book I have read on any of the lists. It feels as if it were made for the "post Covid times" (whether we have reached that yet or not) and fits into the narrative that we all have been living for the last two years. Based on the cholera epidemic of the 1800's, the book takes place in the French Algerian city of Oran during the 1940's (I assume post WWII). The story starts off with first hand accounts of rats dropping dead all over the city and proceeds from there into full lockdowns and hospital clinics being overwhelmed. You can physically match the trajectory of the story to the Covid pandemic (without the rats) and as each phase was entered in the story I was able to place that in our own timeframe. With the narrative set up through the use of first hand accounts and journal articles it also feels phenomenally like World War Z, however the similarities do diverge as this story progresses and the reliance on journal articles and first hand accounts is not as pronounced. The entire story is also guided by an unknown narrator, whom we find out who is at the end of the story. It is an enjoyable story and one I would actually recommend, more so now than probably I would have 3 years ago.
