Fiction
El Gallardo Español 1615 by Miguel de Cervantes and Albert Camus's 1947 novel The Plague take place in Oran.
Part of Arturo Pérez-Reverte's 2006 Capitán Alatriste adventure novel Corsarios de Levante (Pirates of the Levant) takes place in early 17th-century Oran. The action of the book occurs just a few years after the forced expulsion of last Moriscos (Spanish Muslims) from Valencia. There are vivid descriptions of Oran as a sun-blasted North African military stronghold, largely forgotten by the King of Spain and his advisors, whose attention is focused on the wars in the Low Countries and the treasure fleets from the Americas. Fictional hero Capitán Diego Alatriste and his ward Íñigo Balboa find Oran to be manned by an impoverished garrison of Christian Spaniards, living alongside Muslims (some fiercely loyal to Spain), and Sephardic Jews, themselves refugees from the 1492 expulsions ordered by the Catholic Monarchs (Ferdinand and Isabel).
In the movie Casablanca, the route for refugees fleeing to the Americas was Paris to Marseille, across the Mediterranean to Oran, then by train, auto or foot to Casablanca. If they were lucky enough to get an exit visa, they went on to Lisbon from there.
In the ITV Drama Series Hornblower Lieutenant Hornblower is sent by Captain Pellew to Oran in order to obtain supplies, only to discover that Oran is suffering from Bubonic Plague and have to spend three weeks on board an abandoned supply ship en route to Gibraltar loaded with the supplies obtained from Oran, as a sort of quarantine.
Paul Bowles's 1949 novel The Sheltering Sky mainly takes place in Oran.
The heroine of Geraldine Brooks' novel Year of Wonders ends up in Oran after a year in a village under a self-imposed quarantine fighting the plague in 1666.
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Famous quotes containing the word fiction:
“I write fiction and I’m told it’s autobiography, I write autobiography and I’m told it’s fiction, so since I’m so dim and they’re so smart, let them decide what it is or it isn’t.”
—Philip Roth (b. 1933)
“A fiction about soft or easy deaths ... is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It’s forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there’s a fair, a movie house, cotton candy.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)