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Camus at Combat: Writing 1944-1947 Hardcover – January 16, 2006
| Albert Camus (Author) Find all the books, read about the author, and more. See search results for this author |
Paris is firing all its ammunition into the August night. Against a vast backdrop of water and stone, on both sides of a river awash with history, freedom's barricades are once again being erected. Once again justice must be redeemed with men's blood.
?
Albert Camus (1913-1960) wrote these words in August 1944, as Paris was being liberated from German occupation. Although best known for his novels including The Stranger and The Plague, it was his vivid descriptions of the horrors of the occupation and his passionate defense of freedom that in fact launched his public fame.
Now, for the first time in English, Camus at 'Combat' presents all of Camus' World War II resistance and early postwar writings published in Combat, the resistance newspaper where he served as editor-in-chief and editorial writer between 1944 and 1947. These 165 articles and editorials show how Camus' thinking evolved from support of a revolutionary transformation of postwar society to a wariness of the radical left alongside his longstanding strident opposition to the reactionary right. These are poignant depictions of issues ranging from the liberation, deportation, justice for collaborators, the return of POWs, and food and housing shortages, to the postwar role of international institutions, colonial injustices, and the situation of a free press in democracies. The ideas that shaped the vision of this Nobel-prize winning novelist and essayist are on abundant display.
More than fifty years after the publication of these writings, they have lost none of their force. They still speak to us about freedom, justice, truth, and democracy.
- Print length384 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherPrinceton University Press
- Publication dateJanuary 16, 2006
- Dimensions6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
- ISBN-100691120048
- ISBN-13978-0691120041
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Editorial Reviews
Review
"As Camus at 'Combat', a new collection of his editorials . . . makes plain, the experience, first, of the Nazi occupation of France, and then of the struggle of Algerian independence against France led him to conclude that the 'primitive' impulse to kill and torture shared a taproot with the habit of abstraction, of thinking of other people as a class of entities."---Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker
"France's preeminent Camus scholar before passing away in 2004, here presents 165 of the articles Camus wrote . . . for the clandestine French Resistance newspaper Combat. The later articles are less enthusiastic than the earlier ones, reflecting Camus's gradual belief that there were three failures of French democracy after the war: France's inability to deal with war crimes and criminals; its failure to bring democracy to its colonial possessions, Indochina and Algeria; and the incapacity of the French press to remain free of outside influences."---Bob Ivey, Library Journal
"The value of this comprehensive (and exhaustively footnoted) volume is to exhibit the quotidian political thought of a great humanist as he turned his attention from the triumph of the Resistance to the much messier task of building a new France out of the war's detritus." ― San Francisco Chronicle
"Albert Camus called the 20th century 'the century of fear', but he may as well have been writing about the 21st. Although written more than 50 years ago, his editorials for the Resistance newspaper Combat in the postwar period are uncannily resonant today."---Fiona Capp, The Age
"A stirring, if occasionally arcane, book that puts Camus back into his historical context. Here is Camus frothing at the mouth about collaborators and beating the drum loudly for his countrymen to get involved in creating a new democracy."---John Freeman, Denver Post
"[E]xpertly edited by Jacqueline Levi-Valensi. In her hands his work becomes an affecting account of France in the years of crisis, and at the same time the portrait of a brilliant and principled man dealing with slippery, intractable reality."---Robert Fulford, National Post
"This remarkable book presents for the first time in English all of Camus's Combat writings. . . . This is political journalism at its best. As editorialist and editor in chief of Combat, Camus urged his readers to purge themselves of dogmatism, pursue justice rather than vengeance, denounce ideologies, and insist on freedom of the press. Responding to daily events 60 years ago, these pieces still resonate powerfully today in an era of global conflict." ― Choice
"The first complete English-language translation of Camus's wartime journalism, this important book offers both a moving portrayal of life under the Occupation and a fascinating glimpse at the evolution of the author's thinking." ― France
"These beautifully translated articles . . . are as worth reading in 2006 as they were in 1946. Camus never wavered on a demand that many other philosophers and writers of his time deemed naïve: for morality in politics, born out of a conviction that political choices are ethical in essence."---Stanley Hoffman, Foreign Affairs
"It is astonishing to see how many of the issues on which Camus comments, and which were broached by the situation in which he was writing, anticipate and prefigure problems that continue to afflict us today. In his commentaries, Camus never stays on the surface of the events that provide his starting point; he is always searching for the deeper causes--moral, social, psychological, or ultimately religious (though he was not a believer of any kind)--that motivate human behavior. For this reason, many of these occasional writings still live."---Joseph Frank, The New Republic
"Anyone interested in Camus' development as a writer should also be eager to read [these articles. ]. . . [O]f the myriad volumes on contemporary politics that appear in bookstores festooned with 'must-read' blurbs, none is more important than this collection of sixty-year-old editorials. . . . [T]here is a coherence as well as an expansiveness to his writing that transcends the normal limitations of the editorial form."---Michael McDonald, American Interest
Review
From the Inside Flap
Praise for the French edition: "A wonderful book. In 1944 Camus had already published The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. But it was his daily editorials in the resistance newspaper Combat that made him famous, and he emerged from the war as a moral and intellectual leader of postwar France."--Alice Kaplan, Duke University, author of The Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
From the Back Cover
Praise for the French edition: "A wonderful book. In 1944 Camus had already publishedThe Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. But it was his daily editorials in the resistance newspaperCombat that made him famous, and he emerged from the war as a moral and intellectual leader of postwar France."--Alice Kaplan, Duke University, author ofThe Collaborator: The Trial and Execution of Robert Brasillach
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : Princeton University Press (January 16, 2006)
- Language : English
- Hardcover : 384 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0691120048
- ISBN-13 : 978-0691120041
- Item Weight : 1.5 pounds
- Dimensions : 6.75 x 1.25 x 9.75 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #1,482,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #574 in French Literary Criticism (Books)
- #9,259 in Literary Criticism & Theory
- #19,140 in Writing Reference
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Albert Camus (French: [albɛʁ kamy]; 7 November 1913 - 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher, author, and journalist. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom. He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.
Camus did not consider himself to be an existentialist despite usually being classified as one, even in his lifetime. In a 1945 interview, Camus rejected any ideological associations: ""No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."".
Camus was born in Algeria to a Pied-Noir family, and studied at the University of Algiers from which he graduated in 1936. In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons to ""denounce two ideologies found in both the USSR and the USA"".
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Photograph by United Press International [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Intellectual grandstanding aside, I found this book wonderful. It gives perspective into the mind of one of the greatest Journalists / Novelist of the twentieth century. I have enjoyed his essays and novels in the past, but as a former working journalists, the thing that amazed me the most was his ability to see into the future based off of world events. Camus's insights are as revelant today as 60 years ago when he was writing in Combat. In this book, the young man's insight's and intellectual development are laid out in a neatly ordered fashion.
A caveat, this is a hard book to "get into". While there is a grand historical narrative, there is little continuity between the passages, making this, at least for me, a lengthy read. However lengthy it was, it was worth it. Camus's insights and his highly quotable and pity quotes are massively enjoyable. My significant other would account the times I had to read her a line. As a teacher, I had to have much restraint to not plaster my room with his quotes. The entry reflecting the first explosion of the atomic bomb is worth the price of admission alone.
What I enjoyed most about this book was how Camus applies the themes so prevalent in his essays and novels to the dramatic events in the immediate days leading up to and following the end of WW II. I was struck by the absolute chaos and turmoil that existed but is often forgotten.
This book is excellent for so many reasons. The beauty of Camus' writing is equaled by the gravity of the events he describes.
Albert Camus wanted a Revolution
For Albert Camus the only true task of a man born in an absurd world is to be aware that he has a life to live, a life of freedom and revolt. The purpose of this revolt should not be power, but justice, not politics, but morality, not domination, but greatness.
Revolt means fighting for a true ‘Revolution’, for a constitution where freedom and justice for everybody are totally guaranteed, for a ruthless destruction of all big trusts and the powers of money and for a foreign policy based on honor and loyalty.
His socialism: freedom and justice
For Albert Camus, every man should always have his fate in his own hands. He does not believe in absolute or infallible doctrines, but only in the stubborn improvement of the human condition. He wants to build a State where every individual has the same chances at the start of his life, and where the majority in a country is not exploited by a privileged minority. For him, freedom necessarily implies a political climate in which every human being is respected physically and mentally (free speech).
Economics and the international order
Albert Camus was a partisan of the combination of a collectivist economy with liberal politics. Without a collectivist economy in which a government can transfer the industrial proceeds from the privileged to the working class, political freedom is a deception. But without the constitutional guarantee of political freedom, the collectivist economy can kill in the bud every individual initiative or expression (art).
For him, the mechanical civilization reached its highest degree of savagery with the atomic bomb. Now, we need to choose between mass suicide and an intelligent use of our scientific conquests. Albert Camus dreamed of a world organization which could ensure peace for all nations and where all nations great or small would have the same rights. He dreamed of a world economy where all raw materials would be a common good, where competition would be replaced by cooperation, where colonial trade would be open for everyone and where money would have a ‘collective status’.
The media (the press), art
For Albert Camus, the freedom of the media (the press) cannot be guaranteed if they are in the hands of the powers of money for those would certainly influence directly or indirectly the content (the messages of these media) by promoting their own ideology and their own private interests.
For Albert Camus, a true work of art by its mere existence denies the rhetoric of ideologies. Political action and artistic creation are two sides of the same revolt against all the hatred in the world. He doesn’t know a single great work of art whose concept is solely based on hatred.
Comment
Today, we are very far away from the 'ideal' world for which Albert Camus fought so fiercely: a world of peace, where poverty has been eradicated, a world without churches, spiritual or secular. Instead, we live in a world dominated by the powers of money with vast and insatiable appetites and by sectarian interests. These powers control the media through their long arms and gagged ‘journalists’. Where are the Albert Camus of today?
These still very relevant texts of the greatest French writer of the modern era should be read by all men and all women of good will.





