Personal Writings

by Albert Camus

Overview

The Nobel Prize winner's most influential and enduring personal writings, newly curated and introduced by acclaimed Camus scholar Alice Kaplan.

Albert Camus (1913-1960) is unsurpassed among writers for a body of work that animates the wonder and absurdity of existence. Personal Writings brings together, for the first time, thematically-linked essays from across Camus's writing career that reflect the scope and depth of his interior life. Grappling with an indifferent mother and an impoverished childhood in Algeria, an ever-present sense of exile, and an ongoing search for equilibrium, Camus's personal essays shed new light on the emotional and experiential foundations of his philosophical thought and humanize his most celebrated works.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780525567219
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	08/04/2020
Pages:	224
Sales rank:	143,701
Product dimensions:	5.20(w) x 7.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Born in Algeria in 1913, ALBERT CAMUS published The Stranger—now one of the most widely read novels of this century—in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.

Table of Contents

Foreword Alice Kaplan ix

The Wrong Side and the Right Side (L'Envers et I'Endroit), 1937 1

Preface, 1958 3

Irony 17

Between Yes and No 29

Death in the Soul 40

Love of Life 53

The Wrong Side and the Right Side 60

Nuptials (Noces), 1939 65

Nuptials at Tipasa 69

The Wind at Djemila 78

Summer in Algiers 86

The Desert 100

Summer (L'Eté), 1954 115

The Minotaur, or Stopping in Oran 117

The Almond Trees 144

Prometheus in the Underworld 148

A Short Guide to Towns Without a Past 153

Helen's Exile 159

The Enigma 166

Return to Tipasa 175

The Sea Close By 186

Notes 199

Editorial Reviews

"A collection of brief, piercing personal pieces by the 1957 Nobel laureate . . . Camus reveals himself to readers, discussing his affections, regrets, memories, problems, complaints, and ideas about art and writing . . . What will strike many readers is the author’s extraordinarily evocative language, his astonishing facility to create memorable phrases and take readers to places most have never been but who, because of his artistry, feel immediately at home . . . Much eloquent—often lyrical—evidence that the author deserved his Nobel Prize." —Kirkus Reviews (Starred Review)

"This collection of essays reminds us that Camus offered a more difficult kind of inspiration — the sort that does not put us at ease but makes us uneasy; the sort that does not gloss life but gazes at it with open eyes." —Robert Zaretsky, The Los Angeles Review of Books

From the Publisher

★ 2020-06-13
A collection of brief, piercing personal pieces by the 1957 Nobel laureate.

In a selection of essays from the 1930s to the 1950s, Camus (1913-1960) reveals himself to readers, discussing his affections, regrets, memories, problems, complaints, and ideas about art and writing. He writes frequently about his youth in Algeria (where he was born), and in a particularly poignant piece near the end, he revisits Tipasa (Tipaza), Roman ruins not far from where he grew up. He notes that “returning to places of youth” can be “a great folly,” but he clearly demonstrates otherwise in this essay. The author also writes incisively about war (both world wars), the meanings of cemeteries, the sea and sun and rain and the desert, and youth and age: “No longer to be listened to: that’s the terrible thing about being old…condemned to silence and loneliness.” Throughout are numerous classical allusions (to historical figures and events, to mythology); there’s a particularly fine piece about Prometheus and his sacrifices for humanity. “If Prometheus were to reappear,” he writes, “modern man would treat him as the gods did long ago: they would nail him to a rock, in the name of the very humanism he was the first to symbolize.” Camus sometimes chides the human race, but he sees hope in us, as well. Although he writes quite a bit about Algeria, he also describes some experiences elsewhere in the world (Paris, New York), and he sets the final essay aboard a trans-Atlantic ship. He discourses about the weather, the sailors, and the enormity of it all: “We sail across spaces so vast they seem unending.” What will strike many readers is the author’s extraordinarily evocative language, his astonishing facility to create memorable phrases and take readers to places most have never been but who, because of his artistry, feel immediately at home.

Much eloquent—often lyrical—evidence that the author deserved his Nobel Prize.

Kirkus Reviews