CAMUS, Albert; Justin O’BRIEN [Trans.] ~ The Myth of Sisyphus and other essays.

FIRST UK PRINTING. Hamish Hamilton, London: 1955.

Large 8vo., navy publisher's boards, backstrip lettered and lined in silver with publisher's device to foot; together in the clipped pictorial dustwrapper, printed in blue and red; THE BOOK a very good plus copy, boards clean, lightly bruised and sunned to spine tips; endpapers browned and offset, with previous ownership name and date to front paste-down (mostly hidden beneath front flap), together with bookseller sticker; rear hinge lightly cracked at gutter; THE WRAPPER also very good, retaining much of its brightness, darkened along spine and folds with some light scratching, chipped at spine tips and corners with a little loss of design; beginning to split along lower panel/spine. The wrapper is protected in a removable Brodart archival cover. First UK edition, thirteen years after the French. Camus' philosophical work, which focuses around man's absurd search for meaning in a nihilistic, meaningless world. The book was composed in 1940, during the fall of France and during a period of great social change and hardship, when millions of refugees fled from the advancing German army. Comparing man to Sisyphus - the Greek God who was condemned to forever roll the same boulder up the same hill - Camus was attempting to illustrate the absurdity of life, and humanity's appetite for a purpose against the 'silence of the universe'. He argues that it is only when man realises the futility of his own existence that he can reach acceptance: "one must imagine Sisyphus happy," he concludes. Written in the same year as 'L’Étranger', the book cemented his reputation as one of the 20th century's greatest existentialist thinkers. Several of the other essays included in this edition focus on evocations of the author's North African homeland. Very scarce with the wrapper. “At this point of his effort man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world”

BINDING: Hardcover
CONDITION: Very Good +
JACKET: Very Good