Committed Writings (Penguin Modern Classics) - Softcover

Camus, Albert

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0241400406 ISBN 13: 9780241400401

Publisher: Penguin Classics, 2020

Synopsis

'To create today means to create dangerously'

This new collection contains some of Camus' most brilliant political writing as he reflects on moral responsibility and the role of the artist in the world. Letters to a German Friend, written and published underground during the Nazi occupation of France, was born out of Camus' experience in the Resistance and explores what it truly means to love your country. Reflections on the Guillotine, his impassioned polemic against the death penalty, became a touchstone for the movement to abolish capital punishment, while in his Nobel speeches Camus argues that the artist must engage with dangerous times. Together these powerful pieces express Camus' mistrust of rigid ideologies, and his commitment to human solidarity.

'Probably no European writer of his time left so deep a mark on the imagination' Conor Cruise O'Brien

About this title

About the Author

Albert Camus (1913-1960) grew up in a working-class neighbourhood in Algiers. He studied philosophy at the University of Algiers, and became a journalist. His most important works include The Outsider, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Plague and The Fall. After the occupation of France by the Germans in 1941, Camus became one of the intellectual leaders of the Resistance movement. He was killed in a road accident, and his last unfinished novel, The First Man, appeared posthumously.

Justin O'Brien was the Blanche W. Knopf Professor of French Literature at Columbia University and renowed translator of André Gide and Albert Camus, both of whom were his intimate friends.

Edition details

• Publisher: Penguin Classics
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0241400406
• ISBN 13: 9780241400401
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 160