Forget Camus

Albert Camus is broadly regarded as a philosopher of our time: a freedom fighter and a pioneering anti-colonialist. Oliver Gloag rejects the simplicity of this persistent image. A careful reading of Camus’s three major novels – ‘The Stranger’, ‘The Plague’, and ‘The First Man’ – reveals a deep-seated attachment to colonialism and the colonial way of life. ‘Forget Camus’ argues that its subject’s contradictions are central to understanding both his work and the meaning behind his enduring popularity. The legacy of the most widely read Frenchman in the world has been co-opted to present a flattering and false version of colonial history and is an obstacle to France coming to terms with its neocolonial present. ‘Forget Camus’ is a book about colonial history and a nation’s literature that lays bare the ideological contradictions of French society past and present.