Bookshops have reported a surge in sales of The Plague by French author Albert Camus since the beginning of the Sars outbreak.
Meanwhile, VCD store owners say interest has grown in the Hollywood movie Outbreak, starring Oscar-winning actor Dustin Hoffman, which tells the story of the fight against the deadly Ebola virus.
Philip Tsang Tse-yeung, merchandising manager of the Page One chain of bookshops, said the The Plague had already sold out, adding: 'We usually don't keep a lot of this title in stock as it's not among the popular items. All the copies have gone now because of the surge in demand.'
Commercial Press, which sells both Chinese and English books, has also seen a rise in sales of plague-related books. Retail director Charles Kwan said books in Chinese about how to avoid catching contagious diseases and how to strengthen the immune system were also very popular.
Swindon Book Co. in Tsim Sha Tsui said more orders for plague-related books had been placed to meet demand.
The Plague, first published in France in 1947, tells of the fear and selfless acts of the inhabitants of Oran, a coastal town in Algeria gripped by the Black Death, a disease carried by rats, in the 1940s.