Albert Camus is among the most significant French writers of the twentieth century. His novels, The Plague and The Outsider, have a timeless power and appeal and are studied all over the world, and his philosophical work has had an enduring influence. Oliver Todd has been authorised by Camus' family to write the definitive life. Opening with his impoverished childhood in Algiers, Todd brings the historical context to life, shedding light on Camus' later agonising conflict between sympathy for the working class Algerians and for the French colonials with a stake in their adopted land. His was a life of impossible choices and perpetual struggle, from his intimacy with the Gallimard family, despite their collaborationist activities, and his involvement in the conflict between Satre and de Beauvoir; to his own battles with debilitating bouts of tuberculosis and the passionate, restless nature that would never let him settle. With an extraordinary grasp of both his subject and his times, Todd brings to this rich, generous biography a rare immediacy and perception, evoking a great writer and his world with memorable force and engaging subtlety.
'Clear eyed, compendious, with full access to the Camus archive, [Albert Camus] fulfilled every expectation...Todd's biography is both remarkably thorough and candid, and will prove indispensable to all those interested in Camus' life...completely fascinating' -William Boyd, Daily Telegraph
'Todd, in this first authorised, definitive life - and one which is unlikely to be surpassed - reveals Camus to be far more fun than you would expect the author of L'Etranger to be' -Mark Sanderson, Time Out
'Todd has spared no pains in his search for significant details...it is difficult to imagine that there can ever be a more exhaustive study of Camus' personality and of the relationship between his works and his life' -John Weightman, New York Review of Books
'With admirable detachment, Olivier Todd has told us how and why Camus wrote and lived so magnificently' -Tom Rosenthal, Daily Mail
'With the publication of his massive biography, Albert Camus: A Life, Todd does some serious unveiling of the Algiers slum kid who, at 43, became the second youngest Nobel Prize winner in history' -Peter Lennon, Guardian
'Albert Camus offers a lively, richly detailed portrait of this talented, meditative, self-critical, depressive, playful, ribald, vulnerable and unstable man' -Eugene Weber, Wall Street Journal
