A book of philosophical essays, first published in French in 1942, that asks whether life is worth living when the world offers no clear meaning. Camus calls this clash between human longing for sense and the silence of the universe the absurd, and he considers how people respond to it.
He looks at figures such as Don Juan, the actor and the conqueror, and ends with the Greek myth of Sisyphus, condemned to push a stone uphill forever. Camus argues for living fully and with lucid defiance rather than despair. It is short, personal and a good starting point for his thought.
Quotes
Nothing is harder to understand than a symbolic work. A symbol always transcends the one who makes use of it and makes him say in reality more than he is aware of expressing.
What must be remembered in any case is that secret complicity that joins the logical and the everyday to the tragic.
With the exception of professional rationalists, today people despair of true knowledge. If the only significant history of human thought were to be written, it would have to be history of its successive regrets and impotences.
Great novelists are philosopher novelists — that is, the contrary of thesis-writers.