Oran’s and Algiers’ siege conditions matched Camus’s plague narrative
Evidence
Uncannily, the two cities had acquired many of the siege aspects so brilliantly described by Camus in his grim novel, La Peste (first published in 1947), based upon a plague-ridden Oran. The fictitious plague, writes Camus, “had swallowed up everything and everyone. No longer were there individual destinies; only a collective destiny, made of plague and the emotions shared by all.” As in Camus’ Oran, in Algiers alone more than 200 check-points were set up to examine papers and control movements within the city. Trolley-bus windows bore heavy metal grilles to protect against the random grenade; a curfew emptied the streets of vehicles from 9 p.m. onwards, and at 1 a.m. the public lighting was extinguished, plunging the city into darkness. — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1506
Categorization
- XREF: Direct literary-historical bridge to Camus’s La Peste, and the reader has Algerian colonial context to anchor it. — connects to: Algiers in 1962 recreated the siege atmosphere of Camus’ plague-ridden Oran
- SEED: Angle: how a novel written in 1947 became the precise template for reading the real siege of a city seventeen years later.
- corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Horne, Alistair, A Savage War of Peace- Algeria 1954-1962, 1506