Albert Camus
Subtitle: a life
By: Olivier Todd ; translated by Benjamin Ivry.
Edition: 1st American ed.
Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf
Published: 1997
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 434
ISBN-13: 9780679428558
Copyright date: 1997
Subjects: Camus, Albert, 1913-1960; Authors, French -- 20th century -- Biography
Description: In this enormously engaging, vibrant, and richly researched biography of Albert Camus, the French writer and journalist Olivier Todd has drawn on personal correspondence, notebooks, and public records never before tapped, as well as interviews with Camus's family, friends, fellow workers, writers, mentors, and lovers.

Todd shows us a Camus who struggled all his life with irreconcilable conflicts - between his loyalty to family and his passionate nature, between the call to political action and the integrity to his art, between his support of the native Algerians and his identification with the forgotten people, the poor whites. A vey private man, Camus could be charming and prickly, sincere and theatrical, genuinely humble, yet full of great ambition.

The Paris that Camus was inevitably drawn to is one that Todd knows intimately, and he brings alive the war years, the underground activities that Camus was caught up in during the Occupation and the bitter postwar period, as well as the intrigues of the French literati who embraced Camus after his first novel, L'Etranger, was published.

Todd is also keenly attuned to the French intellectual climate, and as he takes Camus's measure as a successful novelist, journalist, playwright and director, literary editor, philosopher, he also reveals the temperament in the writer that increasingly isolated him and crippled his reputation in the years before his death and for a long time after.

He shows us the solitary man behind the mask - debilitated by continuing bouts of tuberculosis, constantly drawn to irresistible women, and deeply troubled by his political conflicts with the reigning French intellectuals, particularly by the vitriol of his former friend Sartre over the Algerian conflict.
Notes: An abridged and edited English version.
Includes index.
The present book is abridged and edited English version of Olivier Todd's biography of Albert Camus, which was published in France in 1996. While all relevant information about the life and work of Albert Camus has been retained, some material not of sufficient interest to the American general reader has been omitted to improve the narrative flow. The notes at the end of the French edition have also been deleted. In order to keep the American edition an accessible length we decided to integrate necessary information into the text rather than including the extensive documentation of sources. - Translator's note.
Table of contents: title: Matriculation number 17.032; title: "Mosquito, you've been accepted."; title: Silence and words; title: Metaphysics and politics; title: White socks; title: "Little bits of soul"; title: The temptation to action; title: Heroism and "a load of crap"; title: Saint Augustine without Marx; title: The letter from Salzburg; title: Banned playwright; title: The "political agitator"; title: Intellectual worker; title: An older brother; title: Battles; title: The reading room; title: Persistent hopes for peace; title: A beach at Bouisseville; title: Exile; title: Exodus; title: Stopover at Oran; title: An important thing; title: Which absurdity?; title: Short of breath; title: Man's prejudices; title: Resistances; title: 180,000 copies; title: Combats; title: The Ramberts; title: The island with three rivers; title: The terror; title: Bitterness; title: Dear Comrade; title: The unique one; title: Three friends; title: Forty grams of streptomycin; title: 5 rue Sébastien-Bottin, facing the garden; title: On the courtyard side; title: Rebellions; title: In a glass bowl; title: November 1, 1954; title: "Algeria is not France"; title: The prisoner's shout; title: A black-hearted anemone; title: The ways of silence; title: The prize to pay; title: Algerian griefs; title: I don't know how to repeat myself; title: Grand'rue de L'Eglise; title: Conclusion