Albert Camus

Edward J. Hughes is Professor of French at Queen Mary, University of London. His books include Writing Marginality in Modern French Literature: from Loti to Genet (2001) and Proust, Class, and Nation (2011). He edited The Cambridge Companion to Camus (2007).

Winner of the Franco-British Society Literary Prize 2015 - AwardThough a latecomer to this literary and political tempest, Edward Hughes' short book is nevertheless a welcome arrival . . . Hughes has written a concise and cogent account of Camus' life and writings. Unlike many of his biographers, Hughes maintains an admirable critical distance from his subject. With his even language, his balanced summaries and mostly fair analyses, he avoids the appearance of parti pris . . . The territory Hughes covers is well travelled, yet he brings to light telling details and offers readings missed by many other biographers. . . . Clearly written and well researched, Edward Hughes' book offers a solid introduction to Camus' life and work. - TLSDrawing extensively on correspondence, interviews, notebooks, news articles, and biographies, Hughes traces Camus' life in detail, from his working-class upbringing in colonial Algeria through his rise to celebrity and untimely death . . . Those looking for a brief yet comprehensive biography will be pleased. Recommended. - ChoiceAnguish and pessimism haunt this biography, but that is the unavoidable result of the biographer's success in setting before the reader the portrait of a writer forced, as he acknowledged in a letter to Jean Grenier in 1959, to become resigned to cohabiting with oneself - French Studiesan important addition to the Critical Lives series . . . The richness of this critical study lies very much in the shifting perspective on two countries Algeria, the land of Camus' birth on 7 November 1913, and France, where Camus died in a car crash on 4 January 1960, at the age of 46 . . . Hughes writes with a freshness of approach, with compassion for the subject, and makes us regret deeply the loss of a literary giant, an eternally young and youthful meritocrat, cut down in his prime. - Franco-British Society