The Complete Notebooks

by Albert Camus, Ryan Bloom (Translator)

Overview

The first complete translation of Albert Camus’s personal notebooks written between 1933 and 1959, published for the first time in one comprehensive volume.
 
Throughout his career, French writer and philosopher Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks that offers an unrivaled glimpse into the writer at his most personal and reflective. These notebooks contain his thoughts on politics, solitude, personal failings and regrets, his travels, and his relationships with friends and rivals. They also provide insight into his process as a thinker—his frustrations, his ideas for novels and plays (some pursued and others abandoned), his routines, his aspirations, and his self-recriminations.

For Camus devotees, there is no more intimate experience than reading these notebooks. On the one hand, his fallibility is on full display: He is irritated by mediocrity, frustrated with his health, plagued by insomnia, and miserable about life’s petty necessities. Yet, he is also intensely curious and observant, sometimes moved to rapture by landscapes and people. Readers will experience the bounty of Camus’s philosophical imagination and witness firsthand how his ideas take shape. The notebooks contain drafts of letters to friends and recorded reflections on the compromises that being in the world demands.

This publication marks the first time Camus’s complete notebooks have been published in one comprehensive volume. Expertly and movingly translated by Ryan Bloom with extensive footnotes contextualizing the entries, The Complete Notebooks will remain a literary treasure for years to come.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226749242
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/05/2025
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	656

About the Author

Albert Camus (1913–60) was a French philosopher, writer, and journalist and one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century letters. His widely read and translated works include the novels The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall and the philosophical texts The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. Ryan Bloom is a literary translator, fiction writer, and essayist from Washington, DC. His translations of Camus’s work include Caligula and Three Other Plays; Travels in the Americas; The First Man: The Graphic Novel; and Notebooks 1951–1959. He is a 2024–2025 Guggenheim Fellow and a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan University.

Table of Contents

Translator’s Introduction



Notebook I: May 1935–September 1937

Notebook II: September 1937–April 1939

Notebook III: April 1939–February 1942

Notebook IV: January 1942–September 1945

Notebook V: September 1945–April 1948

Notebook VI: April 1948–June 1949

Travels in South America: June–August 1949

Notebook VI: September 1949–March 1951

Notebook VII: March 1951–December 1953

Notebook VIII: December 1953–July 1958

Drafts and Notes Tucked in Notebook VIII

Notebook IX: July 1958–



Appendix I. The First Notebook: 1933

Appendix II. The Oran Notebook: March 1938–August 1942

Index

Editorial Reviews

“An intimate glimpse into the psyche of a widely admired writer.”

— Praise for Ryan Bloom’s translation of Camus’s "Travels in the Americas", The Wall Street Journal

“An elegant new translation.”

— Praise for Ryan Bloom’s translation of Camus’s "Travels in the Americas", London Review of Books

“Now complete for the first time, in a fluent English translation…The inner life of a great absurdist, with lessons for us in times of turmoil.”

 

— Kirkus Reviews

“In 1935, soon after his first marriage, Camus began to jot down his insights in notebooks that would nourish every project to come. For anyone who wants to understand Camus’s creative process, these notebooks are essential. Guidebooks, outlines, sketches of characters and scenes, arguments with the world and with himself, they show an admirable consistency of tone and purpose from the fledgling writer of the 1930s to the international celebrity of the 1950s. Until this edition, the notebooks existed in several uneven translations. Now, thanks to Ryan Bloom’s tour de force, English-language readers have access to the inner voice of the writer-at-work.”

— Alice Kaplan, author of “Looking for “‘The Stranger’” and coauthor of “States of Plague”

“In this fluently translated and brilliantly annotated edition of Camus’s notebooks, Bloom has done us a great service. In our own era of political violence and moral confusion, the bracing clarity and stubborn honesty of Camus’s reflections on his own troubled times could not be more welcome.”

— Robert Zaretsky, author of “Victories Never Last”

“‘I’m a writer. It’s not me but the pen that thinks, remembers, or discovers,’ writes Albert Camus in one of the many intriguing entries of his notebooks, admirably translated into English and annotated by Ryan Bloom. Camus’s notebooks reveal the kernels of his evolving literary ideals and political positions during some of the most crucial moments of mid-twentieth-century European history. Bloom’s meticulously researched footnotes not only explain the historical contexts of the notes but also indicate the developed, rewritten form these initial pen scratchings take in Camus’s completed novels and political essays, thus giving us an excellent sense of the complexity of his (re)writing and (re)thinking processes. Camus’s pen has never been better served in English than in this volume.”

— David Carroll, author of “Albert Camus the Algerian”

“What Bloom has accomplished in The Complete Notebooks—not only assembling the disparate fragments, handwritten and typed, retyped, then remastered by Camus himself, but also exposing the points at which Camus self-edits—is an astonishing feat and will be an enduring gift to the community of Camus’s readers, present and future. Only an exceptionally discerning eye for the layers of details found across multiple versions can reveal the very process of creation that brings readers closer to what Camus might have been thinking at the time. Those dedicated to following the evolution of Camus’s singular thought and style will be thrilled to discover this expertly translated volume of those thoughts and ideas collected, finally, in one place.”

— Anne H. Quinney, University of Mississippi

From the Publisher

‘I’m a writer. It’s not me but the pen that thinks, remembers, or discovers,’ writes Albert Camus in one of the many intriguing entries of his notebooks, admirably translated into English and annotated by Ryan Bloom. Camus’s notebooks reveal the kernels of his evolving literary ideals and political positions during some of the most crucial moments of mid-twentieth-century European history. Bloom’s meticulously researched footnotes not only explain the historical contexts of the notes but also indicate the developed, rewritten form these initial pen scratchings take in Camus’s completed novels and political essays, thus giving us an excellent sense of the complexity of his (re)writing and (re)thinking processes. Camus’s pen has never been better served in English than in this volume.

author of “Albert Camus the Algerian” David Carroll

Now complete for the first time, in a fluent English translation…The inner life of a great absurdist, with lessons for us in times of turmoil.”

 

Kirkus Reviews

In 1935, soon after his first marriage, Camus began to jot down his insights in notebooks that would nourish every project to come. For anyone who wants to understand Camus’s creative process, these notebooks are essential. Guidebooks, outlines, sketches of characters and scenes, arguments with the world and with himself, they show an admirable consistency of tone and purpose from the fledgling writer of the 1930s to the international celebrity of the 1950s. Until this edition, the notebooks existed in several uneven translations. Now, thanks to Ryan Bloom’s tour de force, English-language readers have access to the inner voice of the writer-at-work.

author of “Looking for “‘The Str Alice Kaplan

An intimate glimpse into the psyche of a widely admired writer.

The Wall Street Journal - Praise for Ryan Bloom’s translation of Camus’s "Travels in the Americas"

In this fluently translated and brilliantly annotated edition of Camus’s notebooks, Bloom has done us a great service. In our own era of political violence and moral confusion, the bracing clarity and stubborn honesty of Camus’s reflections on his own troubled times could not be more welcome.

author of “Victories Never Last” Robert Zaretsky

What Bloom has accomplished in The Complete Notebooks—not only assembling the disparate fragments, handwritten and typed, retyped, then remastered by Camus himself, but also exposing the points at which Camus self-edits—is an astonishing feat and will be an enduring gift to the community of Camus’s readers, present and future. Only an exceptionally discerning eye for the layers of details found across multiple versions can reveal the very process of creation that brings readers closer to what Camus might have been thinking at the time. Those dedicated to following the evolution of Camus’s singular thought and style will be thrilled to discover this expertly translated volume of those thoughts and ideas collected, finally, in one place.

University of Mississippi Anne H. Quinney