The First Man by Camus, Albert (1996) Paperback

A masterpiece...One of the most extraordinary evocations of childhood that exist in any language. In the First Man Albert Camus tells the story of Jacques Cormery, a boy who lived a life much like his own son. Camus summons up the sights, sounds, and textures of a childhood circumscribed by poverty and a father's death yet redeemed by the austere beauty of Algeria and the boy's attachment to his nearly deaf-mute mother. The result is a moving journey through the lost landscape of youth that also discloses the wellsprings of Camus's aesthetic power and moral vision. Published thirty-five years after its discovery amid the wreckage of the car accident that killed the author, The First Man is the brilliant consummation of the life work of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists.