THE BOOK FAIR
READ AND FULFILL YOUR LIFE
Albert Camus
THE
Stranger
Author: Albert Camus
Published: 1942
Genre: Classic
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 154
French author, Albert Camus was a novelist, a playwright, a political journalist and a philosopher. The author won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. Camus was born in Algeria, in 1913 and died in France, in 1960.
The novel depicts a young man who lived his life devoid of sympathy or emotion, regardless of the critical situations he encountered. Only when on trial for murder, did he begin to understand that his odd behavior, used by the prosecution to convict him, was viewed as out of the accepted bounds of society.
Camus’s novel expresses two parallels. The young man’s inability to conform to expected norms in society and the community’s intolerance of his lack of values.
the
Plague
Author: Albert Camus
Published: 1948
Genre: Classic
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 287
Review:
The bubonic plague, carried by rats, invades the city of Oran, in the 1940’s. It is only after many deaths, when the city officials can no longer deny an epidemic, that the plague is announced.
Representative of human behavior, townspeople either use the epidemic to their own advantage, or choose to help their fellow citizens.
Dr. Rieux, the main character, works tirelessly throughout the onslaught, caring for the ill, never giving up, even as he loses his wife and friends to the plague.
The story delves into the philosophy that life and death falls at random, and that only humans seek to rationalize, to find goodness where there is none and refuse to see evil when obvious.
On the political level, the novel is proposed as analogous to the Nazi occupation of Europe.
THE FALL
Author: Albert Camus
Published: 1956
Genre: Classic
Cover: Paperback
Pages: 107
The novel, set in Amsterdam, relates the series of monologues by, Jean-Batiste Clamence, a once wealthy attorney, to a stranger. Clamence despairs over evil in the world and laments that he lives in the former Jewish Quarter, destroyed and emptied of Jews, by the Nazis.
Clamence offers the listener tales of his many good deeds, before his story takes a turn. Clamence confesses that he deliberately chose not to prevent a tragedy and is since, haunted by the memory. Clamence, tormented by guilt, suffers feelings of anguish and believes that random incidents, such as laughter, are directed towards him.
Although Clamence’s conscience pleads that the woman jumps again, so that he may save her, he realizes his choice would be the same.
Albert Camus, author of fascinating works, a humanitarian and existential thinker, won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.