Add to wishlist
The first complete translation of Albert Camus’s personal notebooks written between 1933 and 1959, published for the first time in one comprehensive volume.
Throughout his career, French writer and philosopher Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks that offers an unrivaled glimpse into the writer at his most personal and reflective. These notebooks contain his thoughts on politics, solitude, personal failings and regrets, his travels, and his relationships with friends and rivals. They also provide insight into his process as a thinker—his frustrations, his ideas for novels and plays (some pursued and others abandoned), his routines, his aspirations, and his self-recriminations.
For Camus devotees, there is no more intimate experience than reading these notebooks. On the one hand, his fallibility is on full display: He is irritated by mediocrity, frustrated with his health, plagued by insomnia, and miserable about life’s petty necessities. Yet, he is also intensely curious and observant, sometimes moved to rapture by landscapes and people. Readers will experience the bounty of Camus’s philosophical imagination and witness firsthand how his ideas take shape. The notebooks contain drafts of letters to friends and recorded reflections on the compromises that being in the world demands.
This publication marks the first time Camus’s complete notebooks have been published in one comprehensive volume. Expertly and movingly translated by Ryan Bloom with extensive footnotes contextualizing the entries, The Complete Notebooks will remain a literary treasure for years to come.
Translator’s Introduction
Notebook I: May 1935–September 1937
Notebook II: September 1937–April 1939
Notebook III: April 1939–February 1942
Notebook IV: January 1942–September 1945
Notebook V: September 1945–April 1948
Notebook VI: April 1948–June 1949
Travels in South America: June–August 1949
Notebook VI: September 1949–March 1951
Notebook VII: March 1951–December 1953
Notebook VIII: December 1953–July 1958
Notebook IX: July 1958–
Appendix I. The First Notebook: 1933
Appendix II. The Oran Notebook: March 1938–August 1942
Index
Description
The first complete translation of Albert Camus’s personal notebooks written between 1933 and 1959, published for the first time in one comprehensive volume.
Throughout his career, French writer and philosopher Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks that offers an unrivaled glimpse into the writer at his most personal and reflective. These notebooks contain his thoughts on politics, solitude, personal failings and regrets, his travels, and his relationships with friends and rivals. They also provide insight into his process as a thinker—his frustrations, his ideas for novels and plays (some pursued and others abandoned), his routines, his aspirations, and his self-recriminations.
For Camus devotees, there is no more intimate experience than reading these notebooks. On the one hand, his fallibility is on full display: He is irritated by mediocrity, frustrated with his health, plagued by insomnia, and miserable about life’s petty necessities. Yet, he is also intensely curious and observant, sometimes moved to rapture by landscapes and people. Readers will experience the bounty of Camus’s philosophical imagination and witness firsthand how his ideas take shape. The notebooks contain drafts of letters to friends and recorded reflections on the compromises that being in the world demands.
This publication marks the first time Camus’s complete notebooks have been published in one comprehensive volume. Expertly and movingly translated by Ryan Bloom with extensive footnotes contextualizing the entries, The Complete Notebooks will remain a literary treasure for years to come.
