An edition of Albert Camus (1996)

Albert Camus

a life

1st American ed.
  • 3.50 ·
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  • 3 Have read

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  • 3.50 ·
  • 2 Ratings
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  • 3 Have read

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Last edited by ImportBot
January 26, 2022 | History
An edition of Albert Camus (1996)

Albert Camus

a life

1st American ed.
  • 3.50 ·
  • 2 Ratings
  • 36 Want to read
  • 1 Currently reading
  • 3 Have read

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 very private man, Camus could be charming and prickly, sincere and theatrical, genuinely humble, yet full of great ambition. Todd paints a vivid picture of the time and place that shaped Camus -- his impoverished childhood in the Algerian city of Belcourt, the sea and the sun and the hot sands that he so loved (he would always feel an exile elsewhere), and the educational system that nurtured him. We see the forces that lured him into communism, and his attraction to the theater and to journalism as outlets for his creativity. 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. Filled with sharp observations and sparkling with telling details, here is a wonderfully human portrait of the Nobel Prize-winning writer, who died at the age of 46 and who remains one of the most influential literary figures of our time. - Jacket flap.

Publish Date
Publisher
Alfred A. Knopf
Language
English
Pages
434

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Previews available in: English French

Edition Availability
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: Una Vida
January 2002, TusQuets
Paperback in Spanish
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: Une Vie
April 2002, Distribooks
Mass Market Paperback in French
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: A Life
February 17, 2000, Carroll & Graf
Paperback in English - 1st Carroll & Graf Ed edition
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: une vie
1999, Gallimard
in French - Ed. revue et corrigée.
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: a life
1998, Vintage
in English
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: a life
1997, Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover in English - 1st American ed.
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: a life
1997, Chatto & Windus
in English
Cover of: Albert Camus
Albert Camus: une vie
1996, Gallimard
in French

Add another edition?

Book Details


Published in

New York

Table of 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

Edition 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.

Copyright Date
1997

Classifications

Dewey Decimal Class
848/.91409, B
Library of Congress
PQ2605.A3734 Z76513 1997

The Physical Object

Format
Hardcover
Pagination
x, 434 p.
Number of pages
434
Dimensions
24 x x centimeters

ID Numbers

Open Library
OL657819M
Internet Archive
albertcamuslife00todd
ISBN 10
0679428550
ISBN 13
9780679428558
LCCN
97002991
OCLC/WorldCat
36438785
Library Thing
43162
Goodreads
1147236

Excerpts

On September 22, 1913, on the Saint-Paul Farm outside the town of Mondovi in Algeria, Lucien Auguste Camus wrote to his employer, "The grape harvest at Saint-Paul ended this morning at 10 a.m."
added anonymously.

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History

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January 26, 2022 Edited by ImportBot import existing book
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