The First Man: Le Premier Homme - Hardcover

"A masterpiece...One of the most extraordinary evocations of childhood that exists in any language."
-- Boston Globe

"Serves as a kind of magical Rosetta stone to Camus's entire career, illuminating both his life and his work with stunning candor and passion."
-- Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"The most ambitious and compassionate of his books...The First Man has resurrected the author as dramatically as a revisitation."
-- The Nation

Man Albert 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. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellspring of Camus' aesthetic powers and moral vision.