Camus for Beginners

by David Zane Mairowitz (Author), Alain Korkos (Author), David Zane Mairowitz (Author), Alain Korkos (Author)

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $8.05

  This text traces the development of Albert Camus, from his impoverished background in Algeria, through his participation in the French Resistance movement during World War II, to his tragic death in a car crash in 1960. It explores the central theme of his work - the absurdity of existence in a universe without God or any ostensible purpose, and looks at his gradual estrangement from the Left-Bank intellectual milieu, thanks to his human un-radical views during the Algerian war for independence.

• Used

  Paperback
  2007

  $5.13

  Albert Camus, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957, always refused the existentialist label with which he is usually associated. For Camus, the world was 'absurd', without purpose, leading only unto death, yet all the more invigorating precisely because of this. Long associated with Left-Bank intellectuals, Camus' real emotional centre was always his native Algeria and the poverty of his youth. This has become even clearer with the publication of his posthumous novel The First Man , which has catapulted Camus back into the public eye after years of excommunication by the Left for his 'un-radical' views during the Algerian war. Introducing Camus portrays a man who was an intellectual in the tradition of the great French humanists, a Resistance fighter during World War II, and also a great sensualist for whom sun, sea, sex, football and theatre were the answer to life's absurdity.