Xinhua writers Bai Xu, Wang Aona, Ye Shan

CANBERRA/JAKARTA/TOKYO, April 23 (Xinhua) -- French Nobel Prize-winning author Albert Camus might have never imagined that his book, The Plague, could become popular again among readers nowadays, who found their own life during the COVID-19 pandemic mirrored in the classic novel of mid-19th century.

"I bought this book during the COVID-19 pandemic, and found its plot highly identical to what is happening now in the world," said a Chinese web user nicknamed Mengzhentanxiaoxiong, or Detective Bear, on the online shopping platform Dangdang.com.

"I know that the pandemic will not end soon, but as I learned from the book, the way to combat the disease is to do your job well. I think I will be inspired by it until the end of COVID-19," he wrote.

While the World Book and Copyright Day falls on Saturday, people were once again reminded to pick up the classics and found inspiration from them.

The Plague tells the story of a plague that swept the French Algerian city of Oran, with snapshots of life of different people. They were separated from their loved ones. Some people had tried to escape while some decided to help. There were lives lost, but there were also efforts to combat the disease and bring hope to others.

"I love old literature. I think that we can look to old literature to see what happened in the past, in terms of how society is dealt with and lived with infectious diseases," said Nancy Baxter, a leading Australian epidemiologist who heads the University of Melbourne's School of Population and Global Health.

The world has been battling the COVID-19 pandemic for more than two years, with half a billion cases reported so far and more than 6 million deaths.

It is not the first pandemic to hit the world, and could hardly be the last as well.

According to Camus, everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; "yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky." There have been as many plagues as wars in history; yet always plagues and wars take people equally by surprise.

Professor Baxter noted that as science moved on, people could improve how they manage diseases, but not just through things like vaccines.

She gave an example of cholera, the controlling of which requires sanitation. Therefore, she said that investment in public health and infrastructure would be equally important.

"We can use those (old literature) to say, how do we do better than previous generations in terms of actually managing this both from a scientific perspective in terms of treatments and vaccines, but also from a public health perspective, in terms of improving our conditions so that pandemic is hard to transmit," said the epidemiologist.

If pandemic is a symbolic war, the real warfare on the planet, in spite of peace in most parts, could also invoke people's thoughts.

Rod Campbell, research director in the Australia Institute, told Xinhua that one of his favorites was Catch 22 by U.S. writer Joseph Heller. "It's actually quite a funny book, even though it is all about the madness of war," he said.

Campbell said that he never thought that the war between Russia and Ukraine would break out. "Catch 22 shows you that it doesn't have to make sense, war can still happen."

The Last Train from Hiroshima, by American author Charles Pellegrino, is about the cruelty of war, documenting life in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the time immediately preceding, during and following the aftermath of the atomic bombings of Japan in World War II.

The depiction of the bombing is vivid enough to arouse people's fear of war. But what's more valuable in the book was its reflection of shifting roles of "persecutor" and "victim".

Japan was an invader in WWII. According to Pellegrino, before the atomic bombs were dropped in 1945, some schools in Hiroshima were changed into makeshift military plants, while teenagers were learning how to become suicide bombers.

Decades later, flames and ashes were gone from Hiroshima, but the ghost of war has never left. The previous persecutor, the United States, and the previous victim, Japan, are now alliance in the Quad, while the U.S. is still upgrading its nuclear weapons.

"This book warned against militarism brainwashing, and tolled an alarm of the disastrous consequences of war," said Mao Danqing, professor at Kobe International University in Japan.

No matter war or pandemic, or other problems including education, housing, employment and so on, readers also tend to seek for solution from some new books.

Bambang Suryono, chairman of Indonesia's think tank Asia Innovation Study Center, told Xinhua that for scholars and politicians, The Governance of China by Chinese President Xi Jinping would be inspirational, as many of the problems that many developing countries could have were discussed in the book, and the "Chinese solution" was valuable.

Suryono said what impressed him in the book was the view of putting the people first. "The government could win the hearts of its people only after it takes practical measures to crack down on corruption, lift people out of poverty, and improve medical service and infrastructure," he said.

He also liked the idea of building a community with a shared future for mankind, which he thought would be from the traditional Chinese philosophy of great harmony in the world.

"The idea is very important for today's world, where there are conflicts and uncertainty," said the scholar. "It means that in spite of differences, countries could still cooperate and coexist." Enditem

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