Manhattan Rare Book Company

"The evil that is in the world always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence, if they lack understanding. On the whole men are more good than bad; that, however, isn't the real point. But they are more or less ignorant, and it is this that we call vice or virtue; the most incorrigible vice being that of an ignorance which fancies it knows everything and therefore claims for itself the right to kill. There can be no true goodness, nor true love, without the utmost clear-sightedness..."

FIRST EDITION; A MAGNIFICENT COPY.

"The longest and most ambitious of his fictions, Albert Camus's novel The Plague is widely regarded as his masterpiece. It is certainly an artistic tour de force: a vividly realistic account of a harrowing imaginary event" (Murray Sachs). “When The Plague was first published in 1947, the majority of French critics greeted it as an allegorical presentation, not only of la condition humaine in general, but also of the particular experience of the German occupation... Yet it would be an extremely limiting interpretation to see in The Plague only the description of a single historical experience. The struggle against plague and occupation are part of a wider struggle, not only against the physical evil inherent in the world, but also against the evil which men, by their blindness and indifference as well as by their cruelty, do to one another” (Philip Thody).

One of 215 copies (this one numbered 199) on “vélin our film des Papeteries Lafuma-Navarre”, with the paper thicker and much brighter than the more common issue (which tends to have browned pages). Note: before the number, the limitation page says "Exemplaire de Alfa Navarre" but this is an error printed on all the "Lafuma-Navarre" copies.

CAMUS, ALBERT. La Peste. [Paris]: Gallimard, 1947. First edition. Octavo, original wrappers, with (almost certainly original) glassine; custom half-red morocco box. A beautiful fine copy; without question the nicest we've handled.

Price: $4,900 .