Title: Albert Camus : a life /
Authors: Todd, Olivier.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf,
Year: 1997
Subjects: Camus, Albert, Biography.; Camus, Albert,; Authors, French Biography
Abstract: This volume is a biography of French Algerian author, philosopher, and journalist Albert Camus (1913-1960). Camus won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was a key philosopher of the 20th-century and his most famous work is the novel L'Étranger (The Stranger). This work is the study of a man caught in conflicts between family loyalties and his own passionate nature, between the call to political action and devotion to his art, between his support of the native Algerians and his identification with the forgotten poor whites. Exploring Camus's impoverished childhood in the Algerian city of Belcourt, his underground activities during the Occupation in Paris, the intrigues of the French literati who embraced him after the publication of his first novel, L'Étranger, the author uncovers the solitary private man behind the mask of his celebrity. He shows us a writer isolated by his own success, crippled by the charms of women he could not resist, debilitated by the tuberculosis that did not kill him. The auto accident that did adds only to the ironies in the life of this international giant of twentieth-century literature.
Contents: Matriculation number 17.032 -- "Mosquito, you've been accepted." -- Silence and words -- Metaphysics and politics -- White socks -- "Little bits of soul" -- The temptation to action -- Heroism and "a load of crap" -- Saint Augustine without Marx -- The letter from Salzburg -- Banned playwright -- The "political agitator" -- Intellectual worker -- An older brother -- Battles -- The reading room -- Persistent hopes for peace -- A beach at Bouisseville -- Exile -- Exodus -- Stopover at Oran -- An important thing -- Which absurdity? -- Short of breath -- Man's prejudices -- Resistances -- 180,000 copies -- Combats -- The Ramberts -- The island with three rivers -- The terror -- Bitterness -- Dear Comrade -- The unique one -- Three friends -- Forty grams of streptomycin -- 5 rue Sébastien-Bottin, facing the garden -- On the courtyard side -- Rebellions -- In a glass bowl -- November 1, 1954 -- "Algeria is not France" -- The prisoner's shout -- A black-hearted anemone -- The ways of silence -- The prize to pay -- Algerian griefs -- I don't know how to repeat myself -- Grand'rue de L'Eglise -- Conclusion.