However, the ravages of disease only seem remote. While bacterial disease is largely conquered, viruses, like HIV and Ebola, are incurable. The choices people make and the way they live their lives in the face of plague, where death is no longer remote, but ever present, is the topic of Shariann Lewitt's book Memento Mori . The main city of the planet Reis has suffered an outbreak of a deadly viral disease. The mode of transmission is unknown and there is no cure.
People start dying and the planet is quarantined.
Even commerce with the out lying farming communities is restricted. Like the Algerian city of Oran, in Camus' book The Plague , the city is cut off and left to its own devices. Shariann Lewitt's beautifully written Memento Mori is told through the stories of the regulars of Metz Club. They are bright underachievers, who wear black cloths and talk about creating art in response to the plague. But they do little more than talk.