First Man - 95 edition

Summary: Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own. Camus summons up the sights, sounds and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. Published thirty-five years after its discovery amid the wreckage of the car accident that killed Camus, The First Man is the brilliant consummation of the life an ...show mored work of one of the 20th century's greatest novelists. "The First Man is perhaps the most honest book Camus ever wrote, and the most sensual. . . Camus is. . . writing at the depth of his powers. . . It is a work of genius." -- The New Yorker "Fascinating. . . The First Man helps put all of Camus's work into a clearer perspective and brings into relief what separates him from the more militant literary personalities of his day. . . Camus's voice has never been more personal." -- New York Times Book Review The First Man is a radiant, deeply moving novel of childhood. Camus intended it as the opening book of a projected epic -- his War and Peace -- but in its storytelling magic and its evocative power, it has a satisfying completeness on its own, covering, as it does, the years of Camus's childhood in Algeria. As he recaptures memories of growing up fatherless with a deaf-mute mother and an illiterate, tyrannical grandmother, Camus renders the poverty of a working-class neighborhood transcended by all the sensuous pleasures that nourish this boy's young life -- the escapes to the beach and to the soccer fields with his schoolmates, the joyous hunting expeditions in the backcountry with his uncle and his cronies, the sounds and smells of the streets and docks of Belcourt, the delights of the sun and the sea, and his overwhelming love for his silent mother. Throughout there is the undercurrent of a frustrating search for a father and the awareness of the escalating tension between Algeria and France. But with the miraculous intervention of a wise schoolteacher, the future suddenly opens up. ...show less

Edition/Copyright: 95
Cover: Paperback
Publisher: Vintage Books
Published: 08/28/1996
International: No

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''The First Man is perhaps the most honest book Camus ever wrote, and the most sensual...Camus is...writing at the depth of his powers...It is a work of genius.''

--The New Yorker

''Fascinating...The First Man helps put all of Camus's work into a clearer perspective and brings into relief what separates him from the more militant literary personalities of his day...Camus's voice has never been more personal.''

--New York Times Book Review

Random House, Incorporated Web Site, October, 2000

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