With the intrigue of a psychological thriller, Camus's masterpiece gives us the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach. Behind the intrigue, Camus explores what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd" and describes the condition of reckless alienation and spiritual exhaustion that characterized so much of twentieth-century life. First published in 1946; now in translation by Matthew Ward.
A biography in text and pictures of the highly influential, iconic writer, from his daughter "My children and grandchildren never got to know him. I wanted to go through all the photos for their sake. To rediscover his laugh, his lack of pretension, his generosity, to meet this highly observant, warm-hearted person once more, the man who steered me along the path of life. To show, as Severine Gaspari once wrote, that Albert Camus was in essence a 'person among people, who in the midst of them all, strove to become genuine.'" --Catherine Camus Using selected texts, photographs, and previously unpublished documents, Catherine Camus skillfully and easily takes readers through the fascinating life and work of her father, Albert Camus, who, in his defense of the individual, also saw himself as the voice of the downtrodden. The winner of the Nobel prize for literature, Albert Camus died suddenly and tragically in 1960. He was only 46. There are rumors to this day that the Russian KGB was behind the car crash. Writer, journalist, philosopher, playwright, and producer, he was a shining defender of freedom, whose art and person were dedicated to serving the dignity in humanity. In his tireless struggle against all forms of repression, he was a ceaseless critic of humanity's hubris; the same struggle can still be felt today.
A woman’s passion for the Nobel Prize winner yields “a rich hybrid of biography, literary criticism, intellectual history and memoir” (The Washington Post). Elizabeth Hawes was a college sophomore in the 1950s when she became transfixed and transformed by Albert Camus. The author of such revered works as The Fall, The Plague, and The Stranger, he was best known for his contribution to twentieth-century literature. But who was he, beneath the trappings of fame? A French-Algerian of humble birth; the TB-stricken exile editing the war resistance newspaper Combat; the pied noir in anguish over the Algerian War; and the Don Juan who loved a multitude of women. Above all, he was a man who was making an indelible mark on the psyche of an increasingly grounded and empowered nineteen-year-old girl in Massachusetts. Confident that one day she would meet her idol, Elizabeth never let go of his basic message: that in a world that was absurd, the only course was awareness and action. In this “beautiful memoir of a life-long obsession” (Harper’s Magazine), literary critic Elizabeth Hawes chronicles her personal forty-year journey as she follows in Camus’s footsteps, “bring[ing] this troubled and complex writer back into the light” (The Boston Globe). “A fascinating spin on the mere biographies others produce”, Camus, a Romance is the story not only of the elusive and solitary Camus, one wrought with passion and detail, but of the enduring and life-changing relationship between a reader and a most beloved writer (The Huffington Post).
Exploring themes that preoccupied Albert Camus--absurdity, silence, revolt, fidelity, and moderation--Robert Zaretsky portrays a moralist who refused to be fooled by the nobler names we assign to our actions, and who pushed himself, and those about him, to challenge the status quo. For Camus, rebellion against injustice is the human condition.
By one of the most profoundly influential thinkers of our century, The Rebel is a classic essay on revolution that resonates as an ardent, eloquent, and supremely rational voice of conscience for our tumultuous times. For Albert Camus, the urge to revolt is one of the "essential dimensions" of human nature, manifested in man's timeless Promethean struggle against the conditions of his existence, as well as the popular uprisings against established orders throughout history. And yet, with an eye toward the French Revolution and its regicides and deicides, he shows how inevitably the course of revolution leads to tyranny. Translated from the French by Anthony Bower.
In 1960 a mysterious car crash killed Albert Camus and his publisher Michel Gallimard, who was behind the wheel. Based on meticulous research, Giovanni Catelli builds a compelling case that the 46-year-old French Algerian Nobel laureate was the victim of premeditated murder: he was silenced by the KGB. The Russians had a motive: Camus had campaigned tirelessly against the Soviet crushing of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, and vociferously supported the awarding of the Nobel Prize to the dissident novelist Boris Pasternak, which enraged Moscow. Sixty years after Camus' death, Catelli takes us back to a murky period in the Cold War. He probes the relationship between Camus and Pasternak, the fraught publication of Doctor Zhivago, the penetration of France by Soviet spies, and the high price paid by those throughout Europe who resisted the USSR.
A renowned scholar investigates the "human crisis” that Albert Camus confronted in his world and in ours, producing a brilliant study of Camus’s life and influence for those readers who, in Camus's words, “cannot live without dialogue and friendship.” As France—and all of the world—was emerging from the depths of World War II, Camus summed up what he saw as "the human crisis”: We gasp for air among people who believe they are absolutely right, whether it be in their machines or their ideas. And for all who cannot live without dialogue and the friendship of other human beings, this silence is the end of the world. In the years after he wrote these words, until his death fourteen years later, Camus labored to address this crisis, arguing for dialogue, understanding, clarity, and truth. When he sailed to New York, in March 1946—for his first and only visit to the United States—he found an ebullient nation celebrating victory. Camus warned against the common postwar complacency that took false comfort in the fact that Hitler was dead and the Third Reich had fallen. Yes, the serpentine beast was dead, but “we know perfectly well,” he argued, “that the venom is not gone, that each of us carries it in our own hearts.” All around him in the postwar world, Camus saw disheartening evidence of a global community revealing a heightened indifference to a number of societal ills. It is the same indifference to human suffering that we see all around, and within ourselves, today. Camus’s voice speaks like few others to the heart of an affliction that infects our country and our world, a world divided against itself. His generation called him “the conscience of Europe.” That same voice speaks to us and our world today with a moral integrity and eloquence so sorely lacking in the public arena. Few authors, sixty years after their deaths, have more avid readers, across more continents, than Albert Camus. Camus has never been a trend, a fad, or just a good read. He was always and still is a companion, a guide, a challenge, and a light in darkened times. This keenly insightful story of an intellectual is an ideal volume for those readers who are first discovering Camus, as well as a penetrating exploration of the author for all those who imagine they have already plumbed Camus’ depths—a supremely timely book on an author whose time has come once again.
From his birth in World War I Algiers, to his untimely death in a car crash in 1960, Albert Camus represented the conscience of his generation. This biography examines his novels in the 1940s and 50s, such as The Stranger and The Plague, which echoed the plight of the 20th-century soul.
Edited by Philip Thody, translated by Ellen Conroy Kennedy. "Here now, for the first time in a complete English translation, we have Camus' three little volumes of essays, plus a selection of his critical comments on literature and his own place in it. As might be expected, the main interest of these writings is that they illuminate new facets of his usual subject matter."--The New York Times Book Review "...a new single work for American readers that stands among the very finest."--The Nation
When a young Algerian named Meursault kills a man, his subsequent imprisonment and trial are puzzling and absurd. The apparently amoral Meursault--who puts little stock in ideas like love and God--seems to be on trial less for his murderous actions, and more for what the authorities believe is his deficient character.
