The manuscripts of this book were found in the very state that led to its death by accident. Well, the manuscripts were raw, initial, and incomplete!

The story of his childhood... which had no continuation because he himself had no continuation.

This situation is quite tragic. The incomplete nature of the manuscripts leaves us with a sense of mystery and longing. We can only imagine what the full story might have been like.

Perhaps the author had great plans for this book, but fate intervened. It makes us wonder about the countless other unfinished works that may exist in the world.

Despite their incompleteness, these manuscripts still hold value. They offer a glimpse into the author's mind and creative process.

Maybe one day, someone will be able to piece together the fragments and bring this story to life. Until then, we can only cherish these incomplete works as a testament to the author's vision and talent.

In "The First Man", which is dominated by the nature of the memoir, the scales are reversed as silence is no longer human, but becomes something more than human, more logical than words and more rational than reason because it is "the temple of justice and the covering of love." "Love is silence," Camus writes in his notebooks, and this silence, with its tenderness, turns into a paradise. Camus himself wants to live everything anew, and in this new life, revolution is no longer the axis, but love. And all of this is based on an aesthetic and moral difficulty as Camus gives his works a new reason for existence when he writes to make silence complete.

Camus' exploration of silence and its relationship to love and justice is a profound and thought-provoking theme. His works invite us to consider the power and significance of silence in our lives, and how it can be a source of transformation and renewal.

By emphasizing the importance of silence, Camus challenges us to look beyond the喧嚣 and chaos of the world and find moments of stillness and reflection. In a society that is often dominated by words and noise, his ideas offer a valuable reminder of the need for quiet contemplation and inner peace.

Overall, Camus' exploration of silence in "The First Man" is a testament to his unique perspective and his ability to offer profound insights into the human condition.

Albert Camus's The First Man is an exquisitely poignant and deeply moving exploration of personal identity, memory, and the unwavering nature of human connection.

This unfinished autobiographical novel, which was published posthumously, provides readers with a rare and intimate peek into Camus's childhood in Algeria and his relationship with his mother, as witnessed through the eyes of the protagonist Jacques Cormery.

With its profound insights and heartfelt narrative, The First Man rightfully earns a well-deserved five-star rating.

Written in the final years of Camus's life, it serves as both a reflection on the past and a meditation on the universal human experience.

Through Jacques Cormery's journey to understand his mother and his own origins, Camus delves into themes of love, loss, poverty, and the intricacies of familial bonds.

His exploration of these themes is not only captivating but also thought-provoking, presenting readers with a nuanced and compassionate portrayal of the human condition.

Camus's writing in The First Man is as beautiful and evocative as ever.

His vivid descriptions of the Algerian landscape, the complex dynamics of the Cormery family, and the poignant moments of Jacques's childhood are brought to life with a depth and richness that is truly compelling.

The prose is infused with a sense of honesty and vulnerability, endowing the narrative with a raw, emotional power that deeply resonates.

The characters in The First Man are brought to life with a remarkable degree of realism and complexity.

Jacques Cormery is a captivating protagonist whose quest for understanding and connection is deeply moving.

The portrayal of his mother, a silent and illiterate woman who lives a life of hard work and quiet dignity, is particularly powerful.

Through these characters and their relationships, Camus explores the complexities of love, memory, and identity in a way that is deeply human and universally relatable.

What sets The First Man apart, however, is its exploration of the impact of personal and collective history on individual identity.

Through Jacques's journey to understand his own past, Camus examines the ways in which our origins shape who we are and how we perceive the world.

This exploration of the intersections of personal and historical memory is thought-provoking and deeply insightful, offering a unique perspective on the human experience.

In conclusion, The First Man is a profound and deeply moving work of literature that showcases Albert Camus's immense talent as a storyteller.

With its captivating narrative, complex characters, and insightful exploration of memory, identity, and the human spirit, this novel is a true testament to Camus's literary genius.

I wholeheartedly recommend it to anyone seeking an engrossing, thought-provoking, and emotionally resonant reading experience. Five stars well earned.

Este el libro que lleva en sus manos. En realidad, it is just an initial draft. The great Albert Camus, at the time of the tragic car accident that prematurely took his life at the peak of his career. It was the year 1960. He was only 46 years old. He had already won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He was the second youngest writer to receive this prestigious award. Hours before his death, he gave an interview in which he said: "my work has not yet begun". Absurd. For those of us who love this writer, there could not be a more perfect word to describe the fact: absurd.

It is a book without correction, written in a rush, with numerous errors, but of unquestionable scope and depth. It took 37 years to be published and see the light as a posthumous work. With the sudden and tragic death of his father in the war when he was only one year old. With a miserable city on the verge of revolution. With an illiterate and deaf-mute mother, a deaf uncle who is also a day laborer, a wise and stingy grandmother, surrounded by poverty and misery that is sometimes unbearable...... With these few elements and a few more, Camus writes an autobiographical novel full of tragic beauty, but at the same time cheerful and moving.

There is also a teacher, an extraordinary being in a public school full of poor children and war orphans, who is able to see, polish and channel the talent of little Albert and does everything possible to help him succeed in the midst of so many limitations. This teacher will become the main theme of his Nobel Prize acceptance speech and to whom it is dedicated.

I read this book in 2004. I picked it up again at the end of 2020, a year in which all of Camus' work takes on a new meaning in our lives.

I read it again. If Camus were alive and did everything. There is a difference with all his books, especially in the writing style. Sentences that sometimes span two pages. Maybe it would be a very lively and brilliant novel.

But this very one that exists is excellent. The image of Jacques' mother (maybe Camus' own mother) will never leave my mind... a beautiful and eternal one...

And poverty... a castle with a movable bridge that doesn't move...

And the sun of Algiers... maybe it's because Camus has always been in love with the sun...”People, especially under the sun, become quickly and terribly wild”... I thought of Mersault.

This text seems to be a reflection on Camus' works and the profound impressions they have left. The description of the possible novel with its unique writing style and the vivid images of the mother, poverty, and the sun in Algiers all contribute to a rich and evocative exploration. The mention of Mersault further emphasizes the connection to Camus' literary world and the lasting impact his works have had.

Overall, it is a piece that invites the reader to engage with the essence of Camus' writing and the emotions and ideas it elicits.

'El primer hombre' is an unfinished novel that Camus was writing when he died in a car accident at the age of 46. It is also his most autobiographical novel. It tells the story of a French boy living in Algeria who is ashamed of his family's poverty and ignorance. His family consists of a half-deaf and absent mother, an authoritarian grandmother, and a deaf uncle. His father died in World War I shortly after Camus was born.

The book stops shortly after the protagonist, Jacques, enters high school on a scholarship, at the beginning of adolescence, when things stop being black and white, and when Jacques begins to discover his dark side that had remained hidden until then. But Camus had planned to go much further, until adulthood, and thanks to the notes, we can guess where the story was going.

It may seem that it's not worth reading an unfinished book, and besides, the story of a poor child's childhood is something we've read thousands of times. But Camus writes like a god and makes us believe that what he's telling us has never been told before. He perfectly describes what it's like to be poor, to have to struggle for survival, to have no hope of better times or any aspirations other than to keep surviving, but all this without being overly emotional, with an admirable sobriety and simplicity. On the other hand, he also perfectly describes the small pleasures of life.

Moreover, reading something that you know wasn't fully prepared for publication satisfies the curiosity of any voyeur. It's a delight to discover the small inconsistencies (characters who are in one scene in one paragraph and not in another), the mistakes (characters who change their names, and sometimes even the real name of the person slips out), and the corrections that Camus was making in the process of writing. All books need to be freely interpreted by the reader, but an unfinished one even more so. It's the dream of any nerd to try to guess how the novel was going to end based on the cryptic notes added at the end, which also allow us to see the different possibilities that Camus had considered for developing his story.

The book begins when Jacques goes to see his father's grave in France and decides to try to find out who he really was, in order to understand in a certain way who he is. But no one can tell him anything, neither his mother nor his uncle, who, as both are half-deaf, live in their own world, a world very far from Jacques' and it's extremely difficult for him to communicate with them. Although he has friends and family, Jacques as a child is completely alone, and since he has no one by his side with whom to identify and recognize himself, he cannot build his identity. There is the schoolteacher, but when he enters high school, he disappears from his life. So everything gets worse when he enters high school, because there he can't talk about his family (which he is ashamed of), but at home he can't talk about high school either (because they wouldn't understand anything). Thus, he begins to live in two completely opposite worlds without belonging to either, without belonging anywhere. And here the book ends. Probably Jacques would have continued to grow and continue to feel divided and not fitting in anywhere until... who knows.

Albert Camus, a renowned Nobel laureate in literature, met a tragic end in an automobile crash on January 4, 1960, at the age of forty-six. Amid the debris of the accident, an unfinished manuscript was discovered. This manuscript remained unpublished until it was finally released in France as Le Premier Homme in 1994.

The delay in publication can be attributed to the complex circumstances surrounding Camus at the time of his death. In a captivating introduction to the American edition, Catherine Camus reminds readers of the mood in France in 1960. Camus' moral stances, especially his open criticism of Soviet totalitarianism and his advocacy for a federated Algeria where Arabs and Europeans could coexist peacefully and equally, had earned him enemies across the intellectual spectrum. At the time of his passing, he was "very much isolated and subject to attacks from all sides designed to destroy the man and the artist so that his ideas would have no impact." In such an atmosphere, his widow and friends decided that publishing an unfinished novel "might well have given ammunition to those who were saying Camus was through as a writer."

Madame Camus passed away in 1979, and around that time, the author's reputation began to regain some of its former dignity. The Camus children then decided to revive the manuscript, choosing to publish it themselves rather than entrusting the task to others. They believed that "this autobiographical account would be of exceptional value to those interested in Camus." Indeed, it is an autobiographical work. Catherine Camus notes that her father "would never have published this manuscript as it is, first for the simple reason that he had not completed it, but also because he was a very reserved man and would no doubt have masked his own feelings far more in its final version." She adds: "But it seems to me—and I say this with hesitation for I can claim no objectivity—it seems to me that one can most clearly hear my father's voice in this text because of its very rawness." And she is right.

The book commences with the birth of Jacques Cormery in a remote Algerian village in 1913. Forty years pass before the next chapter begins, with Jacques paying his first visit to the French cemetery where his father, like Lucien Camus, who was mortally wounded at the Battle of the Marne, is laid to rest. Jacques realizes "that life had all gone by without his having tried to imagine who this man was who had given him that life and then immediately had gone off to die in a strange land on the other side of the seas." Thus begins his quest to find his father; the French version titles the entire first part of the book as the "Recherche du père."

The search is no easy feat. When visiting his mother, Jacques attempts to establish some facts, but the information he receives is sparse. She says yes, maybe it was no; she has to reach back in time through a clouded memory, and nothing is certain. As the text states, "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 gray and featureless."

Interspersed with Jacques' conversations, pilgrimages, and imaginings as he tries to construct his father's identity is the story of his own childhood in a working-class Algiers neighborhood. This is vividly conveyed through a detailed portrait of his family. There is his sad and silent mother, to whom the child is completely devoted; an endearing deaf uncle who expresses himself "as much by onomatopoeic sounds and gestures as with the hundred-odd words at his disposal"; a no-nonsense grandmother who dominates the scene with her decisive speech and action ("Go ahead and fail," she tells Jacques when he suggests that he may not pass a critical exam, "And I'll warm your ass for you"); and an older brother. The family is poor, and schooling proves to be Jacques' salvation, just as it was for his creator.

In a life shaped by education, the influence of a schoolteacher cannot be underestimated. For Camus, it was Monsieur German who changed his destiny, as evident from the letter Camus wrote to this mentor upon receiving the Nobel Prize, which is appended to this text. For Jacques, this crucial role is played by Monsieur Bernard (although at one significant point, the name "Germain" appears instead). Also a WWI veteran, Monsieur Bernard "had never known his father, but he often spoke to Jacques of him in a rather mythological way, and in any case at a critical time he knew how to take the father's role." The teacher recognizes the boy's potential and, when Jacques' family hesitates to sacrifice his earning power for the years of cerebral effort required by attending the lycée, Monsieur Bernard intervenes and secures Jacques' future.

Jacques'/Camus' story, while individualized, also reveals a great deal about the broader experience of French Algerians. Once again, the classroom provides some of the most incisive insights. The texts used were always those from France, and these children, who knew only the sirocco, the dust, the short torrential cloudbursts, the sand of the beaches, and the sea in flames under the sun, would diligently read—accenting the commas and periods—stories that were mythical to them. For Jacques, these stories were as exotic as could be. He dreamed about them, filled his compositions with descriptions of a world he had never seen, and was constantly questioning his grandmother about a snowfall that had occurred in the Algiers area twenty years earlier.

Similarly, it is through his acquaintance with a classmate, Didier, that Jacques begins to reflect on the question of French identity. When Didier spoke of France, he would say "our country" and accepted in advance the sacrifices that country might demand. In contrast, for Jacques, the notion of country had no real meaning. He knew he was French and that it entailed certain duties, but France was an abstraction to him, something people called upon and that sometimes made claims on him, a bit like the God he had heard about outside his home, who was evidently the sovereign dispenser of good and bad things and could not be influenced but could do anything with people's destinies.

The First Man was apparently intended to introduce an epic novel, a chronicle of Camus' own family experience as well as a history of French Algeria. Much can be learned along these lines from the appended interleaves, notes, and sketches that detail the author's broader vision. These items, along with the marginal notes and various parts of the text itself, also offer an unusual and privileged window into the writer's craft. The "mistakes" of giving a single character two or three different names and the marked moments where Camus evidently recognized a transition was lacking or information could be presented differently—these elements enrich the book. They demonstrate, in a simple and haunting way, what Albert Camus was thinking as he wrote his last work.

(This is a review of the Knopf edition translated by David Hapgood; the review was first published in The Boston Book Review in 1996.)

This book is truly interesting.

It not only delves into one man's arduous search for information regarding his father but also sheds light on the intricate writing process of an author.

Unfortunately, Camus passed away before he had the opportunity to bring this book to completion.

Throughout the text, there are numerous footnotes that describe the parts of the book on which he intended to expand.

Moreover, it vividly portrays the emotional stages that this man experiences as he delves into the life of his father, a man he never had the chance to know.

The combination of these elements makes this book a captivating read, offering insights into both personal history and the creative process.

It invites the reader to embark on a journey of discovery along with the protagonist, sharing in his joys and sorrows as he uncovers the mysteries of his father's life.

Overall, this book is a remarkable piece of work that will leave a lasting impression on anyone who reads it.

"The First Adam" is a story about a boy named "Jack" who is described in two parts. The story begins with his birth. Then, he goes to the place where his father, who was killed in the war, is buried to find out some details about his life. After that, the author takes the reader to Jack's childhood and describes how he grew up with precise and vivid descriptions.

Jack was left to fend for himself, without a father, to raise himself. He had never experienced those moments when a father, after waiting patiently for his son to reach the age of listening, would call him to tell him the family secret, or an old pain, or his life experience. Jack became sixteen years old and then twenty years old, and no one talked to him. He was left to learn by himself, to grow up by himself, with strength, to find his own morality and truth, until finally he came into the world as a man and then came into the world again with a more difficult birth, that is, this time for others, for women. Just like all those people who came into this land and each of them struggled to obtain a rootless and faithless life.

Perhaps this novel is not his absolute best, but it remains a deeply moving work that is highly autobiographical. The characters within this unfinished novel bear a resemblance to his own family and the path he took while growing up in a destitute family in Algeria. Thus, it is reasonable to assume that the beautiful meditations within it are also drawn from his own life. The most remarkable truth that emerges is that poverty has a universal look. The experiences and realizations of the characters in this novel, who live in an impoverished corner of Algeria, are not so very different from those of poor people in India, where I myself grew up.

Memories and nostalgia are luxuries that only the privileged can afford to cherish. The drabness of poverty makes every day seem the same, a continuous struggle for survival. In this sameness, memories often get lost and fade away.

Primo among many firstborns born in the land of oblivion, of anonymity, a hard and desolate land where one lives resigned. There are no books, letters or objects in the house, only the essential, what is needed immediately. One lives attached to the days, hour by hour. As the years pass, Jaques questions his mother about the life of the father he has never known, and will only receive confused answers because "lost time can only be recovered by the rich." Words like "Fatherland" are unknown. God is an unknown affair, absent, a dispenser of good and evil who influences the destiny of men but who seems to ignore Jaques and his family and those who live there, where the only divinities are misery, the sun and poverty which, however, knows how to offer infinite riches: the beach, the headlong races, the fried potatoes, the school, the readings, the smell of the glue and ink of the books read avidly and of the horse excrement, the wind, the stifling heat. All shapes Jaques.

And when, after seeing the world, he returns to find the memory of his father, he retraces his youth in thought, recalls his childhood with the same burning hunger that animated him as a child.

Maybe I could have given this less than five stars, but what's the point