This book truly deviated from my initial expectations. Having read the first two Camus books, namely The Stranger and The Plague, which possess a philosophical and melancholy essence, I anticipated this one to be more academic in nature. However, it was far from that. Instead, it emerged as a more personal book, filled with nostalgia, abundant feelings, and vivid memories.

Considered an autobiographical novel, its unedited manuscript was discovered in the car wreckage where Camus met his untimely demise. Even in its unedited state, it stands as a masterpiece. Reading Camus' annotations and "witnessing" his thought-process in writing was truly fascinating. The markings and notes indeed made Camus seem more "human" compared to his other works, where the deep philosophical musings were notably absent.

Jacques Cormery (Camus), a poor yet gifted French child, was born and raised in Algeria by a semi-deaf mother and a domineering grandmother. As an adult at the age of 40, he becomes increasingly curious about his father, Henri, who died during the war at a mere 29. Not knowing his father clearly had an impact on Cormery, as he expressed: "Something here was not in the natural order and, in truth, there was no order but chaos when the son was older than the father."

Sadly, nobody in his family could offer much assistance in his quest. He lamented: "In a family where they spoke little, where no one read or wrote, with an unhappy listless mother, who would have informed him about his young, pitiable father?"

Nevertheless, despite his frustration, Cormery (Camus) comprehended the situation. He understood poverty and its profound effect on people, stating: "To begin with, poor people’s memory is less nourished than that of the rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughout lives that are grey and featureless. Of course there is the memory of the heart that they say is the surest kind, but the heart wears out with sorrow and labour, it forgets sooner under the weight of fatigue. Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death."

I will conclude with an excerpt from a letter that Louis Germain (Camus' teacher, the man responsible for rescuing Camus from illiteracy) wrote to Camus: "Who is Camus? I have the impression that those who try to penetrate your nature do not quite succeed. You have always shown an instinctive reticence about revealing your nature, your feelings. You succeed all the more for being unaffected, direct."

I wholeheartedly recommend this book to all Camus fans. It is the kind of work that will linger in the reader's mind for a very long time.

For me, reading about Adam and Eve had a feeling similar to when I watch the movie Amarcord or even Cinema Paradiso.

I was witnessing the story of Adam and Eve's memories from a page. It's a pity that this masterpiece of the story of Adam and Eve is incomplete, but still, the pleasure I got from reading it had nothing to do with a completed and flawless novel.

The story of Adam and Eve is like a mysterious and ancient legend that has always intrigued me. Although it may not be presented in a perfect and complete form, its charm and significance still shine through.

As I read, I can imagine the beautiful garden of Eden, the innocent and curious Adam and Eve, and the fateful encounter with the serpent. It makes me think about the beginning of human history and the choices we make.

Even though the story may have its imperfections, it still has the power to touch our hearts and minds and make us reflect on our own lives.

Albert Camus was a renowned French philosopher and writer.

He was unfortunately struck down by a tragic accidental death before he could complete this particular work. However, despite this setback, significant portions of the text were already in existence, allowing readers to glimpse into what promised to be a great book.

This work is primarily an autobiographical account, set in the colonial Algeria of the early 20th century. The narrative is filled with love; love for his close ones, for the teacher who took him under his wing and enabled him to continue his studies, for the father he never knew, who was lost in the Great War, and also for his fellow man, like the Arab he saves from a lynching after an attack.

Far from the black-and-white thinking of Germanophiles, far from partial and passionate resentment, Albert Camus advocated for intellectual and moral rigor. This is a magnificent read whose message remains ever relevant.

La mère d'Albert Camus

Basically, this is an autobiography by Camus. The manuscript was discovered in the car when Camus died in a tragic car crash in 1960, at the age of 57, just three years after winning the Nobel Prize. In an editor's note, we are informed that it was clearly a draft, filled with numerous footnotes and other annotations that reveal a writer at work. (Don't use the real names; develop; add this; delete that; illegible.) Obviously, it could benefit from additional editing, but it's already a good book as it is.

The manuscript wasn't published until 1994, by his daughter. This was because friends of her mother (Camus's wife) had advised her that by denouncing Communism while advocating for a multicultural Algeria that granted native Algerians the same rights as whites, Camus "alienated both the left and the right."

Although there are occasional references to politics, colonization, and the treatment of Arabs, I wouldn't classify this as a 'political novel.' Camus does note the racial tension: if a bar fight erupted between a Frenchman and an Arab, it was not the same as a fight between two Arabs or two Frenchmen. There is also an incident where a terrorist bomb detonates in the street.

The autobiography is framed within a rather undeveloped shell story of an older man returning to Algeria from France to learn about his roots, especially regarding his father who died in WW I before the son knew him. Camus's ancestors had come to Algeria from Alsace when the Germans took over and expelled the French. Camus's father was a man who knew little of France yet was compelled to go and die for that country.
Camus was born to European parents, but with the early passing of his father, he grew up in poverty. His home lacked books, newspapers, or a radio. Only relatives ever visited; no outsiders. It was an ethnically diverse neighborhood, consisting of Arabs, Europeans, of course, but also M'zab's (a fundamentalist Islamic non-Arab Berber group), Maltese, Italians, and others.
Camus had a semi-deaf, distant mother who worked as a maid. His father's mother managed the household and severely disciplined Camus and his brother. They would be whipped for playing soccer in their shoes. A deaf uncle, his father's brother, also lived with them.
Although Camus was nominally Catholic (as the saying goes, his family only went to church when someone was born, married, or died), he never heard the word God spoken in his house. Even when someone passed away, the most his grandmother would say was "Well, he'll fart no more."
The work pays tribute to one particular teacher who challenged and supported Camus. He provided him with books, obtained a scholarship for him, and intervened with his family when they wanted him to drop out of school to get a job. The Appendix includes a letter Camus wrote to this teacher in gratitude when he received the Nobel Prize.
You get the impression that this book was a labor of love for Camus. (Aren't all autobiographies?) He offers us detailed, multi-page descriptions of hunting with his uncle and friends, activities at the cooperage where his uncle worked, a visit to stables, and more. We learn about making pies, the local dog catcher, the local bazaar, trolley operation, helping his grandmother kill a hen, his school, and a local park where he hung out with friends. These are fascinating insights through a young boy's eyes, and I believe these vignettes of his childhood are the best parts of the book.
Camus was prescient when, on the very last page, he remarks about the main character: “…he, like a solitary and ever-shining blade of a sword, was destined to be shattered with a single blow and forever…” Could this be a reference to the car crash?
Although this book doesn't possess the philosophical depth that his other works have, I still found it an engaging read that held my interest.
Top photo: the crash in France in which Camus was killed. Camus's publisher was driving. From abc.net.au
French riot police lob tear gas at French protesters demonstrating against De Gaulle's self-determination policy for Algeria in the 1960s. From shutterstock.com
The author from cassandravoices.com

Several semesters ago, I had to write an article for the university's epistemology course. The topic was to explain based on Descartes' philosophy whether if a human child is left on a distant island without any education, will the human nature create the characteristics of humanity in that individual or not. I remember that although the sources were the same, there were many differences in opinions on this matter. This book, to a great extent, reminded me of that topic.

The story of a young man who, according to Camus, "realizes at the age of forty that he needs someone to show him the way and guide or correct him: his father. By moral power, not by force." And "he became sixteen years old and then blind, and no one spoke to him. He had to learn alone, become strong alone, by force, by power, alone discover his own ethics and truth, until finally he comes into the world as a man and then, with a more difficult birth, is born into the world again." Hearing this, one might get the impression that the book contains a description of extraordinary events from the life of Jacques, the main character of the story. But the amazing part is that Camus describes his encounter with life, poverty, impotence, religion, war, puberty, and so on through the most ordinary daily events that most people experience, and re-creates Jacques.

This book is Camus' last work. This great man passed away before he could finish this book. But for me, one of the interesting points of this book was the notes around the book that showed Camus' thought process and the methods of connecting the different parts, but at the same time, it made the flow and order of the book disrupted and tiring.

Camus, the author of "The First Man," had a profound and complex life.

He wanted to escape from an unnamed and unmarked land, from an unnamed and unmarked people and family. But in his presence, there was something that demanded anonymity and constant vagueness and namelessness. He was part of this tribe.

"The First Man" is a real novel about the life of a boy who grew up in a very poor family with a very low social and cultural level. They didn't have a correct understanding of the world and mysteries, and for this reason, he didn't have the ability to learn many things. In addition, he lost his father in the war at the age of one, and actually had no ideological and spiritual model or support in his life. This problem started his self-doubt in childhood and his identity crisis from childhood to adolescence.

Due to the poverty of the family, Albert had to work after graduating from elementary school. But his teacher recognized his ability and encouraged him to take the tuition-free exam and continue his studies. He passed the exam and entered junior high school at the expense of the government.

At that time, secondary education in the colony was reserved for the rich. Therefore, from then on, Camus lived in two separate worlds. During the day, he entered the world of thought among the rich, and at night, on the contrary, he walked in the difficult world among the poor.

Camus could not accept the world and the injustice in it because such a situation was a denial of humanity. The concern for justice is evident in most of Camus' works. The most obvious manifestation of injustice in this work can be seen in the hard life of the Arabs in Algeria. The majority were deprived and oppressed, and he himself had spent his childhood among them and their colonial situation had been turned into "second-class citizens". Poverty, respect for suffering, and empathy with the helpless had taught him.

Camus believed that people lived in a meaningless world, but this belief never became an obstacle for him to enjoy life. He was naturally rebellious and eager, and tried to fill the gaps in life with entertainment and sports. Every day, he chased the football in the hot sun. The water and air of the desert, the helmet of the sun, the hot sand of the desert, the smell of burned bodies and sweaty bodies settled in his body and soul, and later spilled over into all his literary works.

Although Camus is recognized as one of the thinkers of the existentialist school, he always rejected this special label and denied any association with ideological schools in an interview, saying: "No, I am not an existentialist. Both Sartre and I have always been amazed at why our names are mentioned together."

"He was nothing but this pained heart that had a passion for life and was rebellious against the deadly system of the noisy world. Forty years had passed with him, and he always hit the wall with the same strength that had arisen between him and the mystery of life. He wanted to go further, to know more, to know before he died, and once, for a moment, to know what it was like to be... but forever."

Dear Albert Camus,

You lived for forty-seven years, and your books such as "The Stranger", "The Plague", "Caligula", "Misunderstanding", and others have become my favorite works.

All of them have been included in the list of my favorite books.

Certainly, if you had lived for another 40 years, many other titles of yours would have been among my favorite books.

May your soul rest in peace and happiness.

Some of my favorite quotes are truly profound and thought-provoking.

The first quote, “There are people who vindicate the world, who help others live just by their presence” (35), emphasizes the power of a person's mere existence to have a positive impact on the world and the lives of those around them.

The second quote, “There is a terrible emptiness in me, an indifference that hurts” (36), expresses a sense of inner void and the pain that comes with it.

The third quote, “…dependence and necessity remain, and that is not far from resembling love” (222), explores the complex relationship between dependence, necessity, and love.

The fourth quote, “her son, endlessly, watched her in the shadows with a lump in his throat, staring at her thin bent back, filled with an obscure anxiety in the presence of adversity he could not understand” (228), vividly描绘s the son's emotional state as he witnesses his mother's struggle.

The fifth quote, “She embraced him, and then, having let go of him, she looked at him and took him again in her arms to kiss him once more, as if she had measured in herself all the love she had or could express and found that one measure was still missing” (55-6), beautifully captures the depth of a mother's love for her child.

The sixth quote, “It was not for mastery of the earth or the priviledges of wealth and leasure that these unexpected nationalists were contending with other nationalists: it was for the priviledge of servitude” (257), offers a unique perspective on the motives behind nationalist conflicts.

The seventh quote, “To begin with, poor people’s memory is less nourished than that of the rich; it has fewer landmarks in space because they seldom leave the place where they live, and fewer reference points in time throughout their lives that are gray and featureless. Of course there is the memory of the heart that they say is the surest kind, but the heart wears out with sorrow and labor, it forgets sooner under the weight of fatigue” (80), delves into the differences in memory between the rich and the poor and the impact of hardship on memory.

The eighth quote, “Remembrance of things past is just for the rich. For the poor it only marks the faint traces on the path to death. And besides, in order to bear up well, one must not remember too much, but rather stick close to the passing day, hour by hour…” (80), further elaborates on the idea that remembrance may be a luxury for the rich while the poor must focus on the present to endure.

The ninth quote, “No one can imagine the pain I’ve suffered… They honor men who do great things. But they should honor even more those who, in spite of what they are, have been able to restrain themselves from committing the worst crimes. Yes, honor me.” (295), expresses the speaker's plea for recognition and understanding of the pain they have endured and the strength it takes to resist temptation.

The tenth quote, “when the soul suffers too much, it develops a taste for misfortune…” (296), suggests that excessive suffering can lead to a strange kind of acceptance or even longing for more misfortune.

The eleventh quote, “ Those who arose love, even if it is disappointed, are princes who make the world worthwhile” (298), emphasizes the power of love, even when it is not returned, to bring meaning and value to the world.

This book was collected by his wife, family, and friends after the death of Albert Camus and written based on his notes.

I'm sure that if Camus himself were alive, he wouldn't allow this book to be published in this form, that is, chaotic and unpleasant.

Now I understand why writers burn their manuscripts before committing suicide.

Because in this way, they won't be published hastily.

This eagerness to publish the works of writers after their death, I think, will cause the graves of great writers to be dug up more often.

!!!

Nedovršeni roman, koji sam ipak morao pročitati. Za razliku od Kamijeva prethodna 4, ovaj je bildungsroman. Sve kreće od početka, dok je protagonista bio u majčinom stomaku. Isto koristi mediteransko-afričku atmosferičnost. Spisi su pronađeni sa Kamijem na mestu pogibije.

Veći deo priče se odnosi na razvoj jednog čoveka. Naslov je na osobu koja nema nasledstvo ni oca, pa mora od početka sve sama da stekne, jer živi u siromaštvu. Opiši su dečačke dane u Alžiru, njihove zabave i iskustva. Potraga za ocem kad odraste je jedna od glavnih tema romana. Ta potraga uporedo teče u jednom delu romana sa detinjstvom. Protagonist se suočava sa različitim izazovima i preispituje svoje vrednosti i ciljeve u životu.

Roman je bogat detaljima o životu u Alžiru i o ljudskim odnosima. Prikazuje kako jedan čovek može da se razvije i postigne svoje ciljeve, unatoč svim preprekama i teškoćama koje susreće na putu. Ipak, nedovršenost romana ostavlja neke pitanja bez odgovora i ostavlja čitaoca sa osjećajem nedostatka.

It is a profoundly emotional and moving work. But it is incomplete. It is incomplete, yes, because Camus died while he was working on it. It was in a traffic accident, and the manuscript was found in the crashed car. It was in 1960 and Camus was already an established writer, he had already won the Nobel Prize. Perhaps half of the work is missing, the half that he had yet to narrate about his own life, as he managed to tell up to his adolescence, and Camus died at the age of 46. And this is an almost autobiographical novel, if not for the fictional will to change the names and narrate in the third person. It is, then, an autofiction. Here, Jacques, the alter ego of Camus, is a boy born in Algeria, to French colonial parents, in the first decade of the 20th century. A time full of conflicts and changes, of wars, poverty and despair (more in some classes than in others). Albert/Jacques is one of those less favored, who lives in scarcity and hard work to be able to eat. His family is poor, he sees himself as the poorest in school, even with his French ancestry he is poor and that weighs on him. His father, whom he never got to know, dies wounded by a shell during World War II, and this book is in part a search for that father, that man, that first man. His mother, for whom he writes this book that she will no longer be able to read because she has died but could never have done so because she was illiterate, was that silent, resigned but enormous pillar that sustained his spirit. A spirit without God but with a hunger for life. This is how he describes it in the annotations that he did not manage to develop and that this edition includes. In those notes, one can see the process and the skeleton of the novel, how he is building it from personal anecdotes, images, sensations and deep reflections on the human condition, or on himself. In this, Camus was a master. He himself is so transparent in his books that the words of his schoolteacher in a letter included in this edition would seem wrong: you were always cautious about revealing your interior. Perhaps in his daily dealings Camus would be like that, but in this (and by extension in his other narrative books), the author shows himself in his deepest composition and that is why it is moving. And also because it is not a sentimental book nor one that pursues horror or pity, but quite the opposite: his intention is always to show the wonderfulness of life in the midst of adversity: the power of love and art (which would be the same vital force) represented in his mother, his schoolteacher and all those whom he loved, according to his words (including books and football). One of the most moving parts of the entire narration is the relationship with his schoolteacher, to whom he would be eternally grateful for having been the first to believe in him and open the doors of the world to him, by paying attention to him, cultivating him when he saw that he had talent and intelligence, and preparing him for a scholarship at the secondary school, which changed his life. The importance of a mentor.

In sum, a beautiful and powerful book in its incompleteness.

This is Camus's unfinished autobiographical novel, which he was working on when he met an untimely death in a car accident in France in 1960.

Supposedly, the manuscript was found in his briefcase at the scene. It tells the story of young Jacques Cormery, who never knew his father as he died in World War I when Jacques was an infant. He was raised in extreme poverty in Algeria by his illiterate grandmother and illiterate, nearly deaf-mute mother, who had a vocabulary of only 400 words.

The book is moving, poignant, and lyrical. It was like a palate cleanser after the contemporary fic-piece of crap I had just finished. However, it stops abruptly, ending with several pages of Camus's notes and fragments. It is dedicated to the "Widow Camus," the mother he adored and thought Christlike, even though she would never have been able to read a word of it.

It is astonishing that a literature Nobel prize winner could have emerged from such a sad and deprived life. Although Camus portrays poverty as rich in certain ways - nature, the ocean, childhood friends, soccer, and the senses all provide experiences of enormous wonder and value. Camus, who had a natural love of learning and whose illiterate family recognized his intelligence, was incredibly fortunate to have a schoolteacher take an interest in him. There was great mutual love between them, and for a year, this man became the father he never had. The teacher urged him and a few other boys to apply to the lycée in Algiers, where he was accepted.

The novel ends before he graduates from the lycée, although it moves back and forth in time. There are chapters where the 40-something Jacques visits his father's grave in France, returns to Algeria to visit his elderly mother, and it contains the wonderful letter Camus wrote to this schoolteacher after he won the Nobel, thanking him, and the teacher's response.

The passages about his impoverished family life are wonderful. The family has no oven, so they prepare dishes and carry the pans to a store next door where the owner will let them use his oven for a few centimes. Jacques goes to the silent movies with his grandmother, who can't understand the subtitles, so he has to read them aloud, but quietly enough not to bother the other moviegoers. However, the action happens too fast for her to keep up, so she can't really enjoy the movies. Ashamed of her illiteracy, she feigns having left her glasses at home. One day, Jacques lies and claims a two franc piece that he kept for himself fell into the family latrine. His grandmother rolls up her sleeves and goes digging through the excrement for it. Camus is superb at showing and describing the most elemental emotions - the shame of poverty, the fear of being beaten at home and at school, the pining for a nonexistent father that no one can tell him much about, and mostly, the enormous love for a mother so closed-in on herself.