SOURCE: "Le premier homme: Camus's Unfinished Novel," in World Literature Today, Vol. 69, No. 1, Winter, 1995, pp. 83-5.

In the following review, King discusses Camus's literary legacy and the publication of The First Man.

When Albert Camus died in a car crash in January 1960, the manuscript of part of a novel on which he had been working was found in his briefcase. Thirty-four years later his daughter Catherine Camus, the literary executor of her father's estate after the death of her mother Francine in 1979, has edited this uncompleted novel, Le premier homme, and allowed it to be published. It became a major publishing event of 1994 in France, with over 100,000 copies sold within the first few months following its release. There were articles, sometimes many pages in length, devoted to discussion of the text in all the major newspapers and weekly magazines.

Publication of Le premier homme is also an event...