Lyrical and Critical Essays

“The literary output of Albert Camus was exceptionally concentrated and well organized, so that each part of it throws light on the other parts…. Here now, for the first time in a complete English translation, we have Camus’ three little volumes of essays, plus a selection of his critical comments on literature and on his own place in it. As might be expected, the main interest of these writings is that they illuminate new facets of his usual subject matter.” —The New York Times Book Review

“The work of Albert Camus began to achieve international recognition after World War II, and from then until his death in 1960 no author was a greater articulator of the general reevaluation of human action that took place in the best literature of this period… because those works are so intense, so occupied with the themes of a civilization, it is good to have small, sometimes rough pieces which show a great writer close to the stuff of experience he would later refine and set into parables for an age. For it was his ability to stay near the plain, uncelebrated habits of life that gave Camus’ art its peculiar strength and his thought its hard humanity.” —Book World

“Some of the pieces have been translated individually before, but several of the best have not, and the complete sequence forms what is in effect a new, single work for American readers that stands among his very finest.” —The Nation