Summer by Albert Camus

Mamadou Abdoulaye Ly

pp. 111-124

in: Emmanuelle A. Vanborre (ed), The originality and complexity of Albert Camus's writings, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2012

Abstract

Summer is one of the most fragmented and desultory of Camus's essays. This text appears as a mosaic. Some texts, like "Minotaur or the Halt at Oran" are almost contemporary of the first of Camus's essays, such as Nuptials or The Right Side and the Wrong Side; others are written in the 1940s, as "The Almond Trees' (1940), "Prometheus in the Underworld" (1946) or "Helen's Exile" (1948); and others belong more or less to the period of the publication of Summer, such is the case for "The Enigma" (1950) and "Return to Tipasa" (1953). What reinforces the impression of a mosaic is the nature of the texts, as some borrow the form of the travel narrative and others that of autobiography.

Cited authors

Camus Albert