Camus narrates the story of Jacques Cormery, a young man who had a life that was very similar to his own. Camus conjures up the sights, sounds, and textures of a boyhood marred by poverty and the death of a father, but redeemed by Algeria's austere beauty and the boy's bond with his practically deaf-mute mother. The First Man is the stunning culmination of one of the twentieth century's greatest novelists' life and work, published 35 years after it was discovered amid the ruins of the car accident that killed Camus. David Hapgood translated from the French.