The Covid-19 pandemic and its consequences on our lives drag on, becoming a ‘normal abnormal’, with their tragic melancholy and despairing monotony. In his novel The Plague, a classic of existentialist literature written as a chronicle of daily life during an epidemic, the writer Albert Camus uses the topics of illness, contagion and fear to create a powerful philosophical meditation on human behaviour. An essayist and chronicler, Sebastian Dieguez is a neuroscientist at the University of Freiburg who, in his research, has focused on the relationship between psychology, cognitive sciences and literature. In this issue, he reviews a passage from Camus’ book.