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The Complete Notebooks

By Albert Camus
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Brief Description
The first complete translation of Albert Camus's personal notebooks written between 1933 and 1959, including new material never before published in English. Throughout his career, French writer and philosopher Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks that offers an unrivalled glimpse into the writer at his... Read More
Format: Hardback
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Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! Description

The first complete translation of Albert Camus's personal notebooks written between 1933 and 1959, including new material never before published in English.

Throughout his career, French writer and philosopher Albert Camus kept a series of notebooks that offers an unrivalled glimpse into the writer at his most personal and reflective. These notebooks contain his thoughts on politics, solitude, personal failings and regrets, his travels, and his relationships with friends and rivals. They also provide insight into his process as a thinker—his frustrations, his ideas for novels and plays (some pursued and others abandoned), his routines, his aspirations, and his self-recriminations.

For Camus devotees, there is no more intimate experience than reading these notebooks. On the one hand, his fallibility is on full display: He is irritated by mediocrity, frustrated with his health, plagued by insomnia, and miserable about life's petty necessities. Yet, he is also intensely curious and observant, sometimes moved to rapture by landscapes and people. Readers will experience the bounty of Camus's philosophical imagination and will witness firsthand how his ideas take shape. The notebooks contain drafts of letters to friends and recorded reflections on the compromises that being in the world demands.

This publication marks the first time Camus's complete notebooks have been published in one comprehensive volume. Expertly and movingly translated by Ryan Bloom with extensive footnotes contextualising the entries, The Complete Notebooks will remain a literary treasure for years to come.

Book Details

INFORMATION

ISBN: 9780226694818

Publisher: The University of Chicago Press

Format: Hardback

Date Published: 11 December 2025

Country: United States

Imprint: University of Chicago Press

Illustration: 3 line drawings

Contributors:

  • Translated by Ryan Bloom

Audience: General / adult

DIMENSIONS

Spine width: 51.0mm

Width: 152.0mm

Height: 229.0mm

Weight: 1080g

Pages: 648

Collections

Albert Camus Biography & Memoir Journals Musicians, Movie Stars & Creative Biographies Non-Fiction Philosophy & Psychology Philosophy & Stoicism Stationery

About the Author

Albert Camus (1913–60) was a French philosopher, writer, and journalist and one of the most influential figures in twentieth-century letters. His widely read and translated works include the novels The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall and the philosophical texts The Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel. Ryan Bloom is a literary translator, fiction writer, and essayist from Washington, DC. His translations of Camus’s work include Caligula and Three Other Plays; Travels in the Americas; The First Man: The Graphic Novel; and Notebooks 1951–1959. He is a 2024–2025 Guggenheim Fellow and a Distinguished Writer-in-Residence at Wesleyan University.

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