Alphabet Authors ~ C is for Camus

I found this idea on Simon's blog @ Stuck in a Book. He picks an author for each letter of the alphabet, sharing which of their books he's read, which I ones he owns, how he came across them etc.

I might not do it exactly as he does but I will try to get to all the letters of the alphabet over time.

Albert Camus is probably going to be the only French language author I will mention in this series. He is one of my favourite writers of all time.

- "The First Man" (F: Le premier homme) - 1994
- "The Just Assassins" (aka The Just) (F: Les Justes)- 1949
- "The Plague" (F: La Peste) - 1947
- "The Stranger" (aka The Outsider) (F: L'étranger) - 1942

Facts about Albert Camus:
Born    7 November 1913 French Algeria
Died    4 January 1960 France
Algerian-born French philosopher, author, dramatist, and journalist.
He joined the Résistance in WWII.
He died in a car accident at age 46.
A French postage stamp with his image was issued in 1967.

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

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This is part of an ongoing series where I will write about a different author for each letter of the alphabet. You can see them all here.

#ThrowbackThursday. The Plague

 

Camus, Albert "The Plague" (French: La Peste) - 1947

My favourite French book of all times.

North Africa, a French town in Algeria, sometime in the 1940s. The rats come first, then the plague follows.

Albert Camus is my favourite French author, the language he uses is fantastic, so precise yet so poetic.

Read my original review here. 

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Camus, Albert "The Just Assassins"

Camus, Albert "The Just Assassins" (aka The Just) (French: Les Justes) - 1949

I'm not the biggest fan of reading plays but I love Albert Camus. And what should I say, this almost read like a novel. It probably helped that it was about a subject I am very interested in. Apparently, this is based on real social revolutionaries.

The big philosophical question of the play is: Can you kill for the sake of revolution? Is it just or is it still murder? Do you kill a few in order to save thousands or even more? It's for you to decide.

Not just with the location, also with the subject and the way he asks the questions, does he remind me of my favourite Russian authors, Dostoevsky and Tolstoy.

In any case, this book leaves us with a lot to ponder about. Perfect.

From the back cover:

"Camus’s The Just (Les Justes) is a five-act play based on the true story of a group of Russian revolutionaries who assassinated Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich in 1905. First produced in 1949, The Just is a significant, eerily resonant, moving, and highly theatrical work. With a humanist perspective, Camus delves into the hearts and minds of five idealists who each grapple with a heinous choice and ultimately commit murder, in the name of justice. Now, more than ever, the play provokes and reverberates with a troubling yet necessary line of inquiry. Do the ends justify the means? Is terrorism ever a viable choice? What is the true cost of resistance? What is the difference between a freedom fighter and a murderer?

What The Just makes so compelling and haunting is the way Camus uses clearly drawn characters to tell such an intimate yet horrific story. He completely understands and sympathizes with his characters but never apologizes for their actions. And although it was written more than fifty years ago and set in another era, The Just feels entirely contemporary and vital. In this play, Camus attempts to understand what it would require to take violent action and assassinate someone in power yet somehow maintain a sense of justice and morality. Is this even possible?"

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Camus, Albert "The First Man"

Camus, Albert "The First Man" (French: Le premier homme) - 1994

Albert Camus is probably my favourite French author and this being an autobiography, I just couldn't reject it. However, this is an unfinished manuscript that was found when the author died in a car crash, hasn't been edited or altered, we get just the raw draft. I am sure this book would have been a lot more enjoyable had the author had the chance to work on it a little longer.

But it is what it is and I am happy this document was found and finally published because it does give us quite an insight into the author's life, especially his youth and also his quest for his father. We get a good idea about the man himself, how his philosophy came to fruition, how his mind works.

On the other hand, his daughter mentions in the introduction that her father might have changed a lot of his thoughts in the book, it might not have been as personal, if he had had the chance to work on it. I would have loved for the author to live a lot longer and write many more stories but at least we get this glimpse of

This was my third book by Camus and it won't be my last, that's for sure.

I read this book in the original French language.

From the back cover:

"The unfinished manuscript of The First Man was discovered in the wreckage of car accident in which Camus died in 1960. Although it was not published for over thirty years, it was an instant bestseller when it finally appeared in 1994. The 'first man' is Jacques Cormery, whose poverty-stricken childhood in Algiers is made bearable by his love for his silent and illiterate mother, and by the teacher who transforms his view of the world. The most autobiographical of Camus's novels, it gives profound insights into his life and the powerful themes underlying his work."

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Camus, Albert "The Stranger"

Camus, Albert "The Stranger" (aka "The Outsider") (French: L'étranger) - 1942

Before I go into the book, let's just have a look at the title. "un étranger" in French is "a foreigner", someone who is not a citizen of the country in question. You don't have to be a linguist in order to see the similarity between "stranger" and "étranger" but if you were you would know that mostly, the "é" in French is a lost "s" from the Latin, so, the foreigner becomes a stranger.

I like this dilemma, it shows how difficult it is to translate a word like this. Who is a stranger, really. And, now we get to the book, why do we exist? And this is really the question of this story, a philosophic one, even though you can read it as a novel, as well.

There are a lot of other literal allusions. The name of our protagonist, Meursault, could mean "Meurs, sot!" Which translates into "Die, Fool!" Another reason why I like this book.

Camus' style of writing is more simple than anything else but it makes everything so true. The way he talks, you just have to believe what he's telling you. His characters come to life through their simplicity. The meaning of life becomes clear though the simplicity. The story becomes believable through his simplicity. We explore many parts of life, death, love, crime, trial, foreign life, life in the sun, relationships, all through the simple life of a young French-Algerian.

It is a sad book because Meursault doesn't really care for anything, he has no idea why he or anyone else is on this earth, whether it's worth living or not. So very sad.

The books by Camus are both easy to read and full of meaning, full of depth. I have read "The Plague" before and loved it very much.

Comment by another member:

• To me, Meursault felt like he was a bystander to life. He had no moral scale and followed life without any kind of input from himself. Society, religion, meaning of life, were all indifferent. Not bending to the expectations of the society and law court by lying to say he was sorry, I saw not as a virtue of honesty, but as the fault of indifference. It would in my opinion nowadays get a personality disorder diagnosis and not be read as a positive comment towards the absurdity of life. The world was different in the 40s and more.
• I obtained and read The Stranger by Albert Camus and yes, I did read it around 50 years ago. We studied The Myth of Sisyphus in University and the play Caligula in high school and I must have liked the challenge of his thinking and the quality of his writing even that long ago. Beautiful writing! I recall that at that time I considered Meursault`s indifference and denial to be symptoms of deeply felt but unexpressed grief at the death of his mother. I`m sticking to that opinion. When I experienced the deaths of those close to me I suffered some of the same thoughts and sensations. BTW, Camus was anything but indifferent and in his life found meaning in his passionate politics and quest for justice. I truly believe that life is filled with all the meaning you can handle even if you do have to make it yourself.
  

Good points for discussion.

We read this in our international online book club in June 2021.

I read this book in the original French language.

From the back cover:

"Meursault will not pretend. After the death of his mother, everyone is shocked when he shows no sadness. And when he commits a random act of violence in Algiers, society is baffled. Why would this seemingly law-abiding bachelor do such a thing? And why does he show no remorse even when it could save his life? His refusal to satisfy the feelings of others only increases his guilt in the eyes of the law. Soon Meursault discovers that he is being tried not simply for his crime, but for his lack of emotion - a reaction that condemns him for being an outsider. For Meursault, this is an insult to his reason and a betrayal of his hopes; for Camus it encapsulates the absurdity of life."

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

Camus, Albert "The Plague"

Camus, Albert "The Plague" (French: La Peste) - 1947

Why did it take me so long to start this classic? I am not a great fan of French literature but I love the French language, so I keep coming back to reading them. I absolutely loved this one and declare it my most favourite French book ever.

North Africa, a French town in Algeria, sometime in the 1940s. The rats come first, then the plague follows. The description of how a whole town comes to terms with such a death sentence, how every single person has his own problems with this devastating news, has been accomplished in a marvellous way. The language Camus uses is fantastic, so precise yet so poetic. Read it, it's totally worth it.

From the back cover:

"The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame and revenge, and a few, like the unheroic hero Dr Rieux, join forces to resist the terror. In part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, The Plague is a compelling depiction of bravery and determination pitted against the precariousness of human existence."

I read this book in the original French language.

Albert Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

I contribute to this page: Read the Nobels and you can find all my blogs about Nobel Prize winning authors and their books here.

See more comments on my ThrowbackThursday post in 2023.