Camus, Albert - The Plague
I first encountered this, a lifetime earlier, in college FLIT (Foreign Literature In Translation).
The book was not what I was expecting, me being 19-20 and simply reading the title of PLAGUE!!!
The novel stayed with me, though, to the point that I bought a used Modern Library edition and added it to the stacks.
I next read this in the 80’s, as AIDS spilled out from the margins, and looked to sweep like a scythe through humanity.
In the book, after the eruption of rats, key characters wither to their essence.
The resigned, the valiant, the selfish, the industrious, fighting an implacable foe, a microscopic adversary that seems to posses a cunning intelligence.
Weeks ago, I started rereading this again, as the pace of the current panic escalated.
I read slowly, half hoping by the time I finished some sort of remedy or control might be at hand.
The fool and his delusions.