Told as a novel, this is a moving account of the author's poverty-stricken childhood in Algeria, the love of his mother and the old schoolteacher who saved him from ignorance. The book acts as a novel on Algeria, on the relationship between man and the land, and between the French and Arabs.
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Told as a novel, this is a moving account of the author's poverty-stricken childhood in Algeria, the love of his mother and the old schoolteacher who saved him from ignorance. The book acts as a novel on Algeria, on the relationship between man and the land, and between the French and Arabs.
Read Less
A few years following his acclaim as Nobel Prize winner, Albert Camus suffers a fatal car accident. The manuscript found in the wreckage has been edited by his daughter and published as "the First Man" in 1995. In this autobiography, camus intdroduces us to the poverty and struggles of the french algerian colonists. Having been orphaned by his fathers death in WWW 1 trenches, he is raised by an affectionate but deaf mute Mother and a tyrannical and abusive gradmother. How he survives this bleak environment is largely due to a remarkable teacher who rechognizes his talsnts and tutors him up to scholarships. Tallented in philosophy as well as journalism, his essays on "Absurdism" and nihilism make a mark on Parisian intellectuals. Written with intense feeling and honesty, his life story is tryuly inspiring. A great book !
sghfromnj
Sep 8, 2007
The First Man - Camus
This was such a gem to find! Unfinished, and therefore full of notes to himself, it shows us Camus in reverie. Tender, heartbreaking, real -- I feel I have been in the life of the boy who surely was Camus himself! Even if you find other books by Camus uncomfortably dark, this one is full of the kind of hope that perseveres in the heart of a brilliant spirit.
