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Jun 30, 2018RogerDeBlanck rated this title 5 out of 5 stars
Over thirty-five years after his untimely death at the age of forty-six, Camus’s final breathtaking novel was published in 1995. In the wreckage of the car accident that ended his life, Camus carried the manuscript of The First Man. He envisioned this autobiographical novel as an epic that would chronicle a life similar to his own, from childhood to manhood. Camus had completed approximately a third of the story at the time of his death. What he captured in that stretch of narrative constitutes perhaps his most personal and revealing as an artist in pursuit of his own understanding and meaning of life. The language and emotion of the text illuminates the innocence of youth. Through the character of Jacques Cormery, Camus wonderfully examines events in the life of the young man up to the point where Jacques confronts the absence of his father, who was killed in the First World War. A stunning achievement, The First Man is the final work from one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers and writers.