So as a sort of dark humour, funny only to myself type thing, I started reading Albert Camus' The Plague.
Oran, a large port on the Algerian coast, becomes afflicted by the plague in French colonial times and the novel is a story of a community like any other, suddenly impotent in the face of a destructive force to which it must not submit.
Now, of course it can also be read as a country suffering under occupation in World War 2 or the human race rebelling against an absurd universe, but I like to think he had smaller, more personal themes in mind...or at least these other themes came through despite his grander visions.
And passages like this one somewhat confirm that for me:
“And he knew, also, what the old man was thinking as his tears flowed, and he, Rieux, thought it too: that a loveless world is a dead world, and always there comes an hour when one is weary of prisons, of one's work, and of devotion to duty, and all one craves for is a loved face, the warmth and wonder of a loving heart.”
So, let's think of the small, personal things.