A Happy Death

by Albert Camus; Richard Howard

Technically this is Camus's first novel, composed when he was not yet 25, although it was not published until 1971, long after his death. A HAPPY DEATH lays the foundation for THE STRANGER, covering the same events and themes surrounding the arbitrary murder of an Arab man by an Algerian clerk. Here the treatment is somewhat more removed and frivolous, but at the same time a more genuine window on the young Camus himself.

Available editions of A Happy Death

	9780679764007, Paperback, Vintage Books, 1995 $2.80 (Very Good ) Other copies of 9780679764007

	9780394472621, Hardcover, Random House Inc, 1973 $5.00 (Fair) Other copies of 9780394472621

	9780394718651, Paperback, Random House Inc, 1973 $1.00 (Used, Very Good) Other copies of 9780394718651

	9780241020999, Book, Hamilton, 1972 £7.11 (ACCEPTABLE) Other copies of 9780241020999

Publisher Notes

In his first novel, A HAPPY DEATH, written when he was in his early twenties and retrieved from his private papers following his death in 1960, Albert Camus laid the foundation for THE STRANGER, focusing in both works on an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood. But he also revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later fiction. For if A HAPPY DEATH is the study of a rule-bound being shattering the fetters of his existence, it is also a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man.
As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice Mersault, to his victim's house--and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through stages of exile, hedonism, privation, and death--it gives us a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. For here is the young Camus himself, in love with the sea and sun, enraptured by women yet disdainful of romantic love, and already formulating the philosophy of action and moral responsibility that would make him central to the thought of our time.

Media Reviews

"Radiant writing.... Describe[s] the world as it might have been seen by an angel on his first visit.... May be read as a preamble to 'The Stranger' and 'The Myth of Sisyphus.'"

First Line

It was ten in the morning, and Patrice Mersault was walking steadily toward Zagreus's villa.

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