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'Shortly after the new year of 1960, a small family car crashed in the French town of Villeblevin in Burgundy, killing two of its occupants. One was the publisher Michel Gallimard; the other was the writer Albert Camus. In Camus’ pocket was an unused train ticket and in the boot of the car his unfinished autobiography The First Man.
Camus was only 46 when his life was cut tragically short but had already worked for the French Resistance, fallen out with Jean-Paul Sartre, written a series of brilliant novels and won the Nobel Prize for Literature. And although he has been dead for nearly 50 years, his ideas on the absurdity of life and the richness of his writing live on.
Contributors
Peter Dunwoodie, Professor of French Literature at Goldsmiths, University of London
David Walker, Professor of French at the University of Sheffield
Christina Howells, Professor of French at Wadham College, University of Oxford'
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