Daily Podcasts Video Research

Like Albert Camus, Zelenskyy has learned to resist the plague of the absurd

JL;DR SUMMARY Robert Zaretsky reflects on how Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy's leadership during Russia's invasion of Ukraine is reminiscent of themes from Albert Camus' novel, "The Plague." A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

JL;DR members get full summaries of all articles in the archive, including this one. Donate & start reading »

Tags

LeadershipUkraineHumanityNazismResistanceInvasionZelenskyyAbsurdityCamus

Places mentioned

Kyiv, Ukraine
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy addresses the German Bundestag via live video from the embattled city of Kyiv."
France
"In France, 1,700 copies of La Peste were sold in January 2020"
Oran, Algeria
"The Plague is an account of a small group of men who find themselves and, more important, find one another in the French Algerian city of Oran"
Houston, Texas, United States
"A professor at the University of Houston, Zaretsky is also a culture columnist"
Chambon-sur-Lignon, Haute-Loire, France
"In fact, for several months during the occupation, he lived not far from Chambon-sur-Lignon."

Support this source

This item was indexed and curated by Cairo, JL;DR's web crawler.
Cairo Item ID 77503
Cairo Source ID 35
Retrieved 2026-03-12 05:31:22 UTC
Curated 2026-03-12 08:31:30 UTC