New Releases by Albert Camus

The impassioned correspondence between the Nobel Prize–winning author and the renowned Spanish-born French actress who appeared in his plays, tracing the extreme highs and lows of their all-consuming love affair—a bestseller in France, translated for the first time into English Albert. Albert chéri. Write me sweet, passionate things. Tell me you love me and how you love me. Tell me you’ll take me to the sea one day—any sea at all—and that we’ll spend time on the shore and in the water. Tell me you’ll always be with me. Tell me about you, and especially today, talk to me about us. —Maria Casarès to Albert Camus, February 1, 1950 It’s said that the affair began on June 6, 1944, the day the Allied forces landed in Normandy. The twenty-one-year-old Casarès was starring in a production of the thirty-year-old Camus’s play The Misunderstanding—and one thing (an after-party hosted by Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir) led to another. Though their fling would be cut short by the end of the Occupation—and the return to Paris of Camus’s wife, Francine—the two were destined to meet again: four years later, to the day, they crossed paths by chance on the Boulevard Saint-Germain. Over the next twelve years, without interruption—until the car wreck of January 4, 1960, that stole Camus’s life—the author and actress would correspond furiously, their words swelling and shimmering and surging like the ocean. Ah! It’s so hard to leave you, your dear face will again fade into the night, but I’ll find you once more in this ocean you love, at the time of evening when the sky takes on the color of your eyes. —Albert Camus to Maria Casarès, June 1, 1949 Across 865 letters of immense and exquisite emotion, they cry and laugh and bicker and beg, make and break promises, talk Stendhal and Proust and Orwell, French theater, sickness, death, writer’s block, and, most of all, they pine—leaving behind a record of one of the great love stories of the twentieth century.

A dispassionate and emotionally detached man confronts the absurdity of life and the inevitability of death. This is a new English translation of a classic of French existentialism.

ABOUT THE PLAGUE The first new translation of The Plague to be published in the United States in more than seventy years, bringing the Nobel Prize winner''s iconic novel ("A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair." --The Washington Post) to a new generation of readers. 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 a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France''s suffering under the Nazi occupation, as well as a timeless story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence. In this fresh yet careful translation, award-winning translator Laura Marris breathes new life into Albert Camus''s ever-resonant tale. Restoring the restrained lyricism of the original French text, and liberating it from the archaisms and assumptions of the previous English translation, Marris grants English readers the closest access we have ever had to the meaning and searing beauty of The Plague. This updated edition promises to add relevance and urgency to a classic novel of twentieth-century literature.

The Stranger Albert Camus 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 Stuart Gilbert.

Introduction, commentaire et notes par Paul-F. Smets

Romance precursor da obra mais importante de Albert Camus, O estrangeiro. Em A morte feliz, o protagonista, Patrice Mersault, funciona como um ensaio para a composição do complexo Meursault, de O estrangeiro. O autor retrata, por meio da inquietação do personagem principal, a busca pela felicidade, assim como a aceitação, o entendimento e a consciência da morte. O autor acredita que, para se obter a felicidade, é necessário ser independente, livre, mas também ter dinheiro; a pobreza é a condição que impede a vida feliz.

''A story for our, and all, times'' Guardian Set in a town consumed by a deadly virus, The Plague is Albert Camus''s world-renowned fable of fear and courage 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 a few, like Dr Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, The Plague is in part an allegory of France''s suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence. ''A matchless fable of fear, courage and cowardice'' Independent ''Magnificent'' The Times

Part of the Penguin Classics campaign celebrating 100 years of Albert Camus, ''A Sea Close By'' reveals the writer as a sensual witness of landscapes, the sea and sailing. It is a light, summery day-dream. Accompanying ''The Sea Close By'' is the essay ''Summer in Algiers'', a lovesong to his Mediterranean childhood.

From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own, with the sights, sounds and textures of a childhood steeped in poverty and a father''s death yet redeemed by the beauty of Algeria and the boy''s attachment to his mother. "A work of genius." —The New Yorker Published thirty-five years after its discovery amid the wreckage of the car accident that killed Camus, The First Man is the brilliant consummation of the life and work of one of the 20th century''s greatest novelists. Translated from the French by David Hapgood. "The First Man is perhaps the most honest book Camus ever wrote, and the most sensual...Camus is...writing at the depth of his powers...It is "Fascinating...The First Man helps put all of Camus''s work into a clearer perspective and brings into relief what separates him from the more militant literary personalities of his day...Camus''s voice has never been more personal." —The New York Times Book Review

New translations of two plays by Nobel laureate Albert Camus that strip away decades of misinterpretation of the playwright''s intentions. "The translations ably capture the menace and atmosphere of Camus'' writing"-Ruth Little, Literary Manager, Royal Court Theatre, London UK. "Spare, unforgiving and direct, much as Camus would want it I suspect"-Geordie Brookman, Artistic Director, State Theatre Company of South Australia.

Set in North Africa, Paris, and Brazil, the six stories in this masterful collection reveal probing portraits of spiritual exile, and man’s perpetual search for an inner kingdom in which to be reborn. From a variety of masterfully rendered perspectives, these six stories depict people at painful odds with the world around them. A wife can only surrender to a desert night by betraying her husband. An artist struggles to honor his own aspirations as well as society''s expectations of him. A missionary brutally converted to the worship of a tribal fetish is left with but an echo of his identity. They display Camus at the height of his powers. Now, on the 50th anniversary of the book’s publication, Carol Cosman’s new translation recovers a literary treasure for our time. Albert Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957.

As a philosophy teacher, mentor, and friend, Jean Grenier (1898?1971) had an enormous influence on the young Albert Camus (1913?1960), who, in fact, acknowledged that Grenier?s Les Iles had touched the very core of his sensibility and provided him with both a ?terrain for reflection, and a format? that he would later use for his own essays. Their correspondence, beginning when the seventeen-year-old Camus was Grenier?s student at the Grand Lycäe of Algiers, documents the younger man?s struggle to become a writer and find his own voice, a period in which he turned frequently to his mentor for advice, comfort, and direction. The letters cover a period of almost thirty years, from 1932 to Camus?s untimely death in 1960. Because Camus destroyed the earlier correspondence he received, the first twenty-six letters in the volume are his only; the full begins in 1940. ø These enlightening letters offer invaluable glimpses into the development of Camus?s aesthetic ideas, literary production, and political stance. In contrast to the correspondence of Grenier, who throughout remains somewhat reticent about his life and doubtful about himself and his works, Camus?s letters are a window into his most profound thoughts and sensitivities, delving deeply into his psyche and, at times, revealing a side of the writer unfamiliar to us. Undoubtedly they allow us a better understanding of Albert Camus, the man and the artist.

Camus'' diary and random notes which provided material for his later fiction

NOBEL PRIZE WINNER • Twenty-three political essays that focus on the victims of history, from the fallen maquis of the French Resistance to the casualties of the Cold War. In the speech he gave upon accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Albert Camus said that a writer "cannot serve today those who make history; he must serve those who are subject to it." Resistance, Rebellion and Death displays Camus'' rigorous moral intelligence addressing issues that range from colonial warfare in Algeria to the social cancer of capital punishment. But this stirring book is above all a reflection on the problem of freedom, and, as such, belongs in the same tradition as the works that gave Camus his reputation as the conscience of our century: The Stranger, The Rebel, and The Myth of Sisyphus.

One of the most influential works of this century, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays is a crucial exposition of existentialist thought. Influenced by works such as Don Juan and the novels of Kafka, these essays begin with a meditation on suicide; the question of living or not living in a universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Albert Camus brilliantly posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.

The Stranger appears out of nowhere, perhaps in a bar, or a parking lot, or at the grocery store. His identity is unknown. His motives are unclear. His information is undeniable. Then he whispers a few words in your ear and disappears, leaving you picking up the pieces of your shattered world. Adam Price has a lot to lose: a comfortable marriage to a beautiful woman, two wonderful sons, and all the trappings of the American Dream: a big house, a good job, a seemingly perfect life. Then he runs into the Stranger. When he learns a devastating secret about his wife, Corinne, he confronts her, and the mirage of perfection disappears as if it never existed at all. Soon Adam finds himself tangled in something far darker than even Corinne's deception, and realizes that if he doesn't make exactly the right moves, the conspiracy he's stumbled into will not only ruin lives -- it will end them.