The Fall

Description

Based around a series of blistering confessions, The Fall was described by Sartre as 'perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood' of Camus' novels Jean-Baptiste Clamence is a soul in turmoil. Over several drunken nights in an Amsterdam bar, he regales a chance acquaintance with his story. From this successful former lawyer and seemingly model citizen a compelling, self-loathing catalogue of guilt, hypocrisy and alienation pours forth. The Fall is a brilliant portrayal of a man who has glimpsed the hollowness of his existence. But beyond depicting one man's disillusionment, Camus' novel exposes the universal human condition and its absurdities - for our innocence that, once lost, can never be recaptured . . .

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.

An irresistibly brilliant examination of modern conscience * The New York Times * Camus is the accused, his own prosecutor and advocate. The Fall might have been called 'The Last Judgement' -- Olivier Todd