The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group is launching a new virtual book club, and its first selection couldn’t be more timely—even though it’s 73 years old.
Albert Camus’ The Plague, about an Algerian city decimated by a pandemic, is the inaugural pick for How Have I Not Read This?, a club that the publisher says will focus on “the books we always meant to read…the ones that call out to us, begging to be discussed.”
The publisher says, “Each month, with the help of our authors and editors, we’ll select a timely and topical book from our publishing library and invite you to read along. We will be partnering with booksellers and librarians for this endeavor, and we encourage you to buy or borrow from those partners when possible.”
The book club will hold a live Zoom event at the end of each month featuring writers and other experts discussing the selected book. For The Plague, the participants will include Yale professor Alice Kaplan, translator Laura Marris and author Emily St. John Mandel, whose novel Station Eleven also deals with the fallout from a serious pandemic. Readers can register for the event, which will take place on May 5, here.
Co-hosting the event will be San Francisco’s City Lights Bookstore, which is also selling copies of The Plague.
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
