The First Man (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics)

by Albert Camus (Author), David Hapgood (Translator)

• Used

  Paperback
  1997

  $5.09

  Semi-autobiographical, THE FIRST MAN is a sensual and emotional work, capturing the beauty of Camus' childhood Algeria. 'It is the most brilliant semi-autobiographical account of an Algerian childhood amongst the grinding poverty and stoicism of poor French Algerian colonials ... His ability to conjure landscape and atmosphere in long, long sentences of exact description without resorting to simile or metaphor is extraordinary' - J G Ballard in the Independent.

• Used

  Paperback
  1996

  $6.50

• Used

  Hardcover
  1995

  $8.29

• New

  Paperback
  2001

  $11.50

  The unfinished manuscript of The First Man was discovered in the wreckage of car accident in which Camus died in 1960. Although it was not published for over thirty years, it was an instant bestseller when it finally appeared in 1994. The 'first man' is Jacques Cormery, whose poverty-stricken childhood in Algiers is made bearable by his love for his silent and illiterate mother, and by the teacher who transforms his view of the world. The most autobiographical of Camus's novels, it gives profound insights into his life and the powerful themes underlying his work. Albert Camus was born in Algeria in 1913. The works that established his international reputation include THE PLAGUE, THE FALL, THE REBEL and THE OUTSIDER. Camus died in a road accident in 1960 and is remembered as one of the greatest philsophical novelists of the twentieth century.