Camus, Albert - A Biography (Pb) Book

Albert Camus was an enigma to many to his own generation, even some who thought they knew him. He didn't quite fit into the French literary mold; men and women of letters were supposed to be born, or at least educated in Paris.

How this man became the Camus we admire is described for the first time in Albert Camus. Here is the man behind the work, the keys essential to the full understanding of The Stranger, The Plague, above to Camus' plaintive The Fall.

Camus grew up fatherless and poor, raised by an illiterate mother in colonial France. His life took a twist when an elementary school teacher saw that he was special and persuaded his mother to keep the child in school, a bold move. In high school a young philosophy teacher set Camus on his path, showing him more of the world.

After serving in the anti-Nazi underground in central France, he entered the postwar universe of André Malraux and Jean-Paul Sartre. By then he was already the young author of The Stranger, and The Myth of Sisphus, books that would mark the era.

The scene is liberated Paris. One young man stands out as editor of Combat, an underground sheet during the Resistance, now an above-ground daily. Charismatic, a lady's man, with a growing reputation as a novelist and playwright, the young Camus became a hero to the postwar generation. Yet his turbulent life was aggravated by incurable illness, passionate affairs, and envious contemporaries. Himself a man of the Left, few if any of his peers understood the origins of his lifelong revulsion for Stalinism and totalitarian society.