The author of the novel, Albert Camus, is a famous modern French existentialist writer and winner of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature.He was born in Mondovi, Algeria in 1913.His father was born in Alsace, lost his parents when he was young, escaped from foster orphanages many times, and worked as an agricultural worker in Algeria when he grew up. Shortly after the beginning of the First World War, he was wounded and died in the battle against Germany. Myu is not yet a year old.After Camus succeeded, he planned to describe his father's life in another novel "The First Man".Raised by his mother, whose ancestors had emigrated to Algeria from Spain, Camus grew up among the impoverished Arab population, always with deep sympathy for their plight.When Camus was studying philosophy at the University of Algiers, he dropped out due to lung disease.Later, he and some young people organized a "Labor Theater Troupe". Later, because they were going to stage a play with the theme of the suppression of the Spanish miners' strike, they were banned by the colonial authorities, and the troupe was disbanded.At that time Camus began writing articles for local newspapers, and later became a journalist in Oran, Algeria. In 1934 he joined the French Communist Party branch in Algeria, leaving the party the following year.During World War II he joined the French Resistance and continued to write against fascism, despite a period of relapse of lung disease. After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Camus served as the editor-in-chief of the de Gaullist's "Battle". One week before its publication in 1947, Camus officially announced his departure from the newspaper.Later, in addition to engaging in theatrical activities and writing that he longed for in his life, he selected literary and artistic works for the great Paris publisher Michel Gallimard for a long time.In the early post-war period, he had a close relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, an existentialist writer who had a great influence in the Western thought and literature circles at that time, but Camus always denied that he belonged to this school, believing that he had knowledge of all issues. Own independent views, do not belong to any faction system. After he published his book "The Rebel" in 1946, he was criticized by Sartre, and a debate started between the two, which caused a sensation. In the spring of 1960, while traveling in a car driven by Gallimard, Camus overturned and died at the age of forty-seven.

This philosophical novel, written in a symbolic way, and the author's first novella (published in 1942) are Camus' most important masterpieces, and both are listed as masterpieces of modern world literature.The period when creative thinking began to brew was after Paris was occupied by German fascists in 1940.At that time, Camus planned to use the form of fables to describe the "terrorist era" in which fascism devoured the lives of tens of millions of people like the plague bacteria. Like the novels of the American writer Melville in the 19th century, through the ferocity of a big whale, Write about the disasters of the times. In 1942, due to the recurrence of lung disease, Camus was transferred from the hot Oran to Panarières in the mountains of southern France (later the author used Panalou as the name of a Catholic priest in the book) to recuperate. When he occupied the south of France, Camus was temporarily cut off from his family, anxious and lonely. This kind of personal experience made his description of the situation of journalist Rambert in the novel particularly vivid and moving.In Camus’s view, the French people who were under the rule of fascist dictatorship at that time—except for some people engaged in resistance movements—did a life of captivity isolated from the outside world for a long time just like during the plague epidemic in Europe in the Middle Ages; "In the city, not only are they facing the threat of death at any time, but they also endure the painful torture of parting from life and death day and night.In his diary on November 11, 1942, Camus compared the rampant German army to "like mice"; in another diary, he wrote down the situation at that time: "The people of the whole country are enduring A silent life in despair, but still looking forward to..." It is worth noting that in the novel, Camus wrote in detail the fear of his contemporaries in the face of a massacre, Anxiety, pain, struggle and struggle, especially depict the huge and profound shock in the mind and emotion of the French bourgeoisie in the process of experiencing the catastrophe of the Second World War.Although Camus, in accordance with his habit, avoided directly describing French society and used Oran, a coastal city on the Mediterranean Sea in North Africa, as the place where the plague occurred. However, we can learn from the fact that this city is prosperous in commerce and material civilization, but the spirit of the citizens is empty, and they spend their lives in pleasure-seeking. City, it is not difficult to see that this is a microcosm of French society.

From to to, Camus expressed some basic viewpoints of existential philosophy: the world is absurd, reality itself is unrecognizable, human existence is irrational, life is lonely, and life is meaningless.Therefore, although Camus repeatedly denied that he was an existentialist, Western literary historians still listed him as a writer of this genre.Camus himself once said: "It is written about people being alone and helpless in an absurd world; it is written about facing the same absurd existence, although everyone's point of view is different, but from a deep point of view, it is different. There are equivalents." In this later representative work, it shows that the author's thinking has changed to a certain extent.When facing the same absurd world, the protagonist Meursault and Dr. Kier in the novel have completely different attitudes: Meursault is indifferent, insensitive, and even holds an outsider's attitude towards the death of his mother and even his own death; When Dr. Rieux was fighting the plague that came from nowhere, although he sometimes felt lonely and hopeless, he clearly realized that his responsibility was to fight against the toxins that devoured thousands of innocent people, and he was fighting hard In it, he sees that love, friendship and maternal love bring happiness to life.Dr. Rieux was not fighting alone. He finally realized that only through the joint efforts of some people with high morals and self-sacrifice spirit can they resist the unscrupulous plague god and human society can have a glimmer of hope.

Camus insisted on the standpoint of individualism, and believed that the individual should be placed first in everything; but when he found that the existentialism that emphasized "individual absolute freedom" could not solve the contradictions of bourgeois social existence, Camus finally returned to the traditional bourgeois humanity. He seeks to answer the question of "Where is the way out for human beings" that he has been pondering over in doctrine. Although the author of the book has obvious limitations, he can vividly reflect some profound contradictions of the people of his time.This novel is also unique in its artistic style, and the whole novel has a rigorous structure, a rich atmosphere of life, and distinct characters. It depicts the psychological and emotional changes of the characters in different situations in depth and meticulously; The epic chapters of the book, the moving elegy of parting, the beautiful poems of friendship and love, and the colorful pictures of the Mediterranean seaside make this work have a strong artistic charm.