Famous French author Albert Camus died unexpectedly at age 46 in a tragic car accident. Found lying in the mud near his outstretched hand was the unfinished hand-written manuscript of a book intended to be his greatest work. After being held back for political reasons, this manuscript was finally published, in its unfinished state, during 1994. Unlike Camus' more famous philosophic books (The Stranger), this book is full of complex feelings and memories. It's almost impossible to believe that this brilliant masterpiece is essentially a dead writer's first rough draft! The book is an unfinished autobiography of Camus early life where he was raised by his impoverished mother in French Algiers. The most disappointing thing about this book, of course, is that it doesn't have much of an ending.

Over thirty-five years after his untimely death at the age of forty-six, Camus’s final breathtaking novel was published in 1995. In the wreckage of the car accident that ended his life, Camus carried the manuscript of The First Man. He envisioned this autobiographical novel as an epic that would chronicle a life similar to his own, from childhood to manhood. Camus had completed approximately a third of the story at the time of his death. What he captured in that stretch of narrative constitutes perhaps his most personal and revealing as an artist in pursuit of his own understanding and meaning of life. The language and emotion of the text illuminates the innocence of youth. Through the character of Jacques Cormery, Camus wonderfully examines events in the life of the young man up to the point where Jacques confronts the absence of his father, who was killed in the First World War. A stunning achievement, The First Man is the final work from one of the 20th century’s greatest thinkers and writers.

A passionate and radiant account of Camus' boyhood in Algeria. The protagonist, Jacques, searches for information about his father who dies in the first World War. He lives an intensely inquiring life with his beloved deaf-mute mother and an authoritarian grandmother. Rescued by a prescient school teacher, from a working class life of great poverty, he is educated and set on his way to becoming the powerful and humane writer that we know. At last, this unedited manuscript found in the car with him when he died in 1960 has been published by his daughter.

Terrific writing, the unfinished nature doesn't spoil the enjoyment of reading.

The edition is 19 years old, and still in very good condition; makes me wonder why electronic books wear out after less than one year!

Extraordinary capturing of the formation of an artist. Not unlikely Proust or Woolf, Camus clearly greatly valued his memories. His writing’s clarity and emotional thrust is so satisfying. He gives you his romance with those childhood sensory experiences that live with him. And at the same time, he reflects on heavyweight moral concerns surrounding colonialism, nationalism, capital punishment, child labor, and the weight of poverty and illiteracy. While Camus certainly never intended to have these notes to be read as a book, the unfinished state doesn’t take away from the thrill of connecting so intimately with this life that bridged such divergent cultures.