Albert Camus' "The First Man": A 192-Page Literary Masterpiece

Neeraj Sinha: Very impressive book. Jacques Cormery is probably an alter ego of Albert Camus and it is his life from his birth to his school days, internship and later when he decides to find out about his long deceased father. The book is very realistic. The end is abrupt but that is understandable as Camus died in an accident before finishing the book. The book is based in Algeria and some people may find fault with the fact that the local Arabs and Berbers are at the most fringe characters in the book. Having said that, the book is about a child, his family and his neighborhood so expecting it to cover the wider society, the players and the interplay is a little too much to ask for.

India on Dec 12, 2022

Amazon Customer: Great book. Penguin books, well printed/reader friendly as always. And that's what matters while buying it online.

India on Aug 04, 2022

Scott J Pearson: When he died in a tragic and unforeseen car crash in 1960, novelist and existentialist Albert Camus had a draft of this work in his briefcase. It was not published until the 1990s, but is the most autobiographical of Camus’ works. The main character, like the author, grew up impoverished in Algeria and escaped a life of the same through education. This tale, properly characterized as a coming-of-age novel, shares how the great writer and future Nobel-Prize winner understood his maturity into an adult man.

The protagonist Jacques Cormery grew up not knowing his father. The father was never married to Cormery’s mother and died in battle in World War I. Jacques’ mother was partially deaf and also mute. His grandmother lived with the family, but was illiterate. So his family background was not ideal for social ascent. He attended school, and a teacher appreciated his keen mind. Through this teacher’s involvement, he won a scholarship to the lycée, the French equivalent of the gymnasium or an advanced high school.

His studies at the lycée opened the world to him, both intellectually and interpersonally. Despite gaining and growing, Jacques was still a child in...

United States on Feb 20, 2021

Thomas A. Regelski: An interesting account of Camus' childhood life, one that seems to be a source for his lifelong attraction to Alrgiers, Oran, etc. However, it was vastly incomplete as his death (we're told he planned an much more extensive auto-biolgraphy). As it is, this short account, while readable, gives to this reader little other insight as to his mature beliefs.

United Kingdom on Dec 12, 2020

Arjen van der Wal: This is a well-organized, professional edition (though the cover art is different from the black & white one advertised, which is too bad – I like that one better than the actual cover you get on the kindle version). Published by Random House, translation by David Hapgood. Well organized, live table of contents that works the way it’s supposed to.

“To you who will never be able to read this book.” The very moving dedication to the first chapter (presumably to his father).

The First Man is a good way of getting to know Camus’ origins, the family environment that shaped him. And the nature of his recollections say more about himself than just a recounting of events. Small details about the way he describes his parents and the members of his extended family. The depth of the author’s humanity comes through in his words. The quest for a true kind of freedom. And the remarkable beauty of small phrases like “the lights of Solferino blurred by the rain.” The presence of his persona is felt strongly in his expressions and descriptions. A mixed sense of melancholy, love and gratitude. There are some parts that drag a little, but the best parts of this book...

Canada on May 16, 2019

Ian Shine: Anyone who has read Camus' other works will relish reading this. For those who haven't, it's probably best to start with "The Outsider" and "The Plague" before coming to "The First Man".
An unfinished autobiographical book, Camus leads us from his birth in the opening chapter, through his father's death to his own discovery of himself as the first man, looking around for a moral compass, the moral compass that guides all of his books.
Towards the end of the book as it was left he writes: "he always was [ready] to lie for pleasure but incapable of doing so out of necessity." This provides a key of sorts to unlocking departments of "The Outsider", and is just one of hundreds of such enlightening comments littered throughout the book.
But the book doesn't merely have value as a guide to Camus. It's not an author's lazy autobiographical book.
The book emanates the smells and sounds of Algerian, the unbearable heat and the September rains. It is rich with balmy feeling that bring the hero's poverty-stricken childhood off the page in a way that has never been equalled.
The Algerian weather is something that sticks out in "The Outsider" as Mersault walks along the beach...

United Kingdom on Apr 24, 2010

Orrin C. Judd: It is better to be wrong by killing no one than to be right with mass graves. -Albert Camus
This unfinished autobiographical novel comes to us nearly forty years after Camus died in a car crash, because, as his daughter explains in her introduction, his wife and friends were afraid to publish it at the time of his death. They feared that it would make an easy target for the increasingly numerous critics of Camus, who had gone from being an icon of the left, winning the Nobel Prize in 1957, to being a pariah, because of his principled stand on two issues: first, he refused to turn a blind eye to the Gulag and denounced the totalitarian methods of the Soviet Union; second, he refused to go along with the Algeria-for-the-Arabs climate of the times, calling instead for a sharing of power between natives and European colonists. In addition, the preoccupation with morality in his writings struck the intellectuals of his day as antiquated and quaint. Publishing a fragmentary work would have invited attacks on his already sliding reputation by a literary class which had turned on him for these myriad political reasons.
The novel, which was actually found in the wreckage of his car,...

United States on Nov 18, 2000