The First Man

From the Nobel Prize-winning author comes the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own, with the sights, sounds and textures of a childhood steeped in poverty and a father’s death yet redeemed by the beauty of Algeria and the boy’s attachment to his mother.

“A work of genius.” —The New Yorker

“The First Man is perhaps the most honest book Camus ever wrote, and the most sensual…Camus is…writing at the depth of his powers…It is 
“Fascinating…The First Man helps put all of Camus’s work into a clearer perspective and brings into relief what separates him from the more militant literary personalities of his day…Camus’s voice has never been more personal.” —The New York Times Book Review

Author Biography

Born in Algeria in 1913, Albert Camus published The Stranger— now one of the most widely read novels of this century— in 1942. Celebrated in intellectual circles, Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident.