Albert Camus and the Ethics of Fiction

Albert Camus and the Ethics of Fiction examines the problem of ethics in Camus’s fiction through close readings of his major literary works. Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a prominent French intellectual, Nobel Prize winning author and political activist. Ethical issues are at the core of Camus’s writing, and he wrestled with the problem of violence. Colin Davis discusses the major works of prose fiction published in Camus’s lifetime--L’Étranger, La Peste, La Chute and L’Exil et le royaume--as well as the two posthumous novels, La Mort heureuse and Le Premier Homme. He argues that Camus’s fiction is many-layered, challenging, probing and open, manipulating readers in problematic ways without embracing stable ethical positions. The ethics of Camus’s fiction lies in its ability to engage the reader in disruptive encounters rather than in any settled moral doctrine. The compelling book will be relevant to readers, students and specialists of Camus’s work and to readers interested in twentieth-century literature and the ethics of fiction.