Most Popular Books by Albert Camus

hrough the story of an ordinary man unwittingly drawn into a senseless murder on an Algerian beach, Camus explored what he termed "the nakedness of man faced with the absurd." First published in English in 1946; now in a new translation by Matthew Ward. opsis 2: The Stranger is the enigmatic first novel by Albert Camus, published in French as L''Étranger in 1942. It was published as The Outsider in England and as The Stranger in the United States. Camus utilized The Stranger as a platform to explore absurdity, a concept central to his writings and at the core of his treatment of questions about the meaning of life. Camus''s concept of the absurd instead implored people to accept life''s lack of meaning and rebel by rejoicing in what life does offer. Elements of this philosophy can be seen in the protagonist, Meursault, as he refuses to behave as if there is meaning where there is none-or, as Camus himself put it in a preface to The Stranger, Meursault "does not play the game." Society thus feels threatened and cuts off Meursault''s head. Similar themes can be seen in Camus''s essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), also published in 1942. About the Author ALBERT CAMUS was born in Mondovi, Algeria, in 1913. After winning a degree in philosophy, he worked at various jobs, ending up in journalism. In the thirties he ran a theatrical company, and during the war was active in the French Resistance, editing an important underground paper, Combat. Among his major works are four widely praised works of fiction, The Stranger (1946), The Plague (1948), The Fall (1957), and Exile and the Kingdom (1958); a volume of plays, Caligula and Three Other Plays (1958); and two books of philosophical essays, The Rebel (1954) and The Myth of Sisyphus (1955), both of which are available in the Vintage series. Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was killed in an automobile accident on January 4, 1960.

A Nobel Prize-winning author delivers one of the most influential works of the twentieth century, showing a way out of despair and reaffirming the value of existence. 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 presents a crucial exposition of existentialist thought.

NOBEL PRIZE-WINNING AUTHOR • One of the most widely read novels of all time—from one of the best-known writers of all time—about a lawyer from Paris who brilliantly illuminates the human condition. Elegantly styled, Camus'' profoundly disturbing novel of a Parisian lawyer''s confessions is a searing study of modern amorality.

“We can finally read the work as Camus meant it to be read. Laura Marris’s new translation of The Plague is, quite simply, the translation we need to have.” —Los Angeles Review of Books 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 to a new generation of readers. • "A redemptive book, one that wills the reader to believe, even in a time of despair." —The Washington Post 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.

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.

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

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.

Meursault leads a bachelor life until he commits a random act of violence. His lack of emotion and failure to show remorse serve to increase his guilt in the eyes of the law. This novel explores the predicament of the individual who refuses to pretend and is prepared to face the indifference of the universe, courageously and alone.

The summation of the existentialist philosophy threaded throughout all his writing, Albert Camus'' The Myth of Sisyphus is translated by Justin O''Brien with an introduction by James Wood in Penguin Classics. In this profound and moving philosophical statement, Camus poses the fundamental question: is life worth living? If human existence holds no significance, what can keep us from suicide? As Camus argues, if there is no God to give meaning to our lives, humans must take on that purpose themselves. This is our ''absurd'' task, like Sisyphus forever rolling his rock up a hill, as the inevitability of death constantly overshadows us. Written during the bleakest days of the Second World War, The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) argues for an acceptance of reality that encompasses revolt, passion and, above all, liberty. This volume contains several other essays, including lyrical evocations of the sunlit cities of Algiers and Oran, the settings of his great novels The Outsider and The Plague. Albert Camus (1913-60) is the author of a number of best-selling and highly influential works, all of which are published by Penguin. They include The Fall, The Outsider and The First Man. Awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, Camus is remembered as one of the few writers to have shaped the intellectual climate of post-war France, but beyond that, his fame has been international. If you enjoyed The Myth of Sisyphus, you might like Camus'' The Outsider, also available in Penguin Modern Classics. ''Camus could never cease to be one of the principal forces in our domain, nor to represent, in his own way, the history of France and of this century'' Jean-Paul Sartre

One of the most influential works of this century, this 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 an absurd universe devoid of order or meaning. With lyric eloquence, Camus posits a way out of despair, reaffirming the value of personal existence, and the possibility of life lived with dignity and authenticity.

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.

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

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.

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.

This final volume, recorded over the last nine years of his life, takes on the characteristics of a personal diary.--[book jacket].

The first novel from the Nobel Prize-winning author lays the foundation for The Stranger, telling the story of an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood. In A Happy Death, written when Albert Camus was in his early twenties and retrieved from his private papers following his death in 1960, revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later fiction. For if A Happy Death is the study of a rule-bound being shattering the fetters of his existence, it is also a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man. As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice Mersault, to his victim''s house -- and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through stages of exile, hedonism, privation, and death -it gives us a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. For here is the young Camus himself, in love with the sea and sun, enraptured by women yet disdainful of romantic love, and already formulating the philosophy of action and moral responsibility that would make him central to the thought of our time. Translated from the French by Richard Howard

The Fall is the third and last novel of this philosopher, published in 1956. Within his work can identify the existentialist line of his thinking, also reflects the philosophy of the absurd in the sense of approval and disenchantment with the affirmation Of positive and negative qualities in the dignity and fraternity of the human being. Camus considered the absurdity of the human condition as a tragic inability to comprehend and transcend in every situation that involves the subject, the same lineage is exposed in the description of a seemingly irrational world in which the individual seeks his sense of life as he is Protagonist of this novel.