The First Man
On
January 4, 1960, at the age of forty-six, Camus died in a car accident. The
incomplete manuscript of The First Man, the autobiographical novel Camus was working on at the time of his death, was found in
the mud at the accident site. Camus' daughter, Catherine Camus, later
transcribed the handwritten manuscript to type press, and published the book in
1994. Camus hoped that it would be his masterpiece and some critics agreed with
his view, even in its unfinished state – largely citing the physical intensity
and uninhibited psychology of boyhood as removed from the reservedness of
Camus' other novels.
Plot
summary
The
novel takes Jacques Cormery from birth to his years in the lycée, or secondary
school, in Algiers.
In a departure from the intellectual and philosophical weight of his earlier
works, Camus wanted this novel to be "heavy with things and flesh."
It is a novel of basic and essential things: childhood, schooldays, the life of
the body, the power of the sun and the sea, the painful love of a son for his
mother, the search for a lost father. But it is also about the history of a
colonial people in a vast and not always hospitable African landscape, about
the complex relationship of a "mother" country to its colonists, and
about the intimate effects of war as well as political revolution.
Characters
- Jacques Cormery – The main protagonist. He is raised in a poor home.
- Catherine Cormery – Jacques's mother, who is "illiterate and largely deaf."[1] Jacques loves her and visits her in his adulthood.
- Pierre - Jacques's childhood friend who completes primary school and lycée by Jacques's side.
Film adaptation
A
film adaptation of the novel, directed by Gianni
Amelio and starring Jacques
Gamblin, was released in 2011.
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