The First Man (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Albert Camus
- First Published: 1994
- Type of Work: Novel
- Time of Work: 1913-1954
- Setting: Saint-Brieuc, a small village in northern France, and Algiers, Algeria
- Principal Characters: Jacques Cormery, Henri Cormery, Catherine Cormery, Grandmother, Ernest, Pierre Marlon, M. Bernard
- Genres: Long fiction, Autobiographical fiction
- Subjects: Family or family life, Mothers, Parents and children, Poverty or poor people, Fathers, Existentialism, Algeria or Algerians
- Locales: France, Algiers, Algeria
Jacques Cormery, protagonist of The First Man, is born in 1913, the same year as Albert Camus, and it is impossible to read this book without equating the two. In fact, Jacques’s mother is even referred to once as “the widow Camus.” Editing would have caught this and many other small slips, but Camus died in a car crash before he could take what remains basically a memoir, despite fictionalized episodes, and turn it into the ambitious novel that he envisioned. Judging from the notes included at the end of this edition, he planned to delineate the complex web of personal,...
[The entire page is 2270 words long]
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