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Happy Death

Part of Vintage International

Author Albert Camus
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Paperback
$17.00 US
Knopf | Vintage
On sale Aug 29, 1995 | 208 Pages | 978-0-679-76400-7
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Winner of the Nobel Prize 

Camus wrote A Happy Death, his first novel, when he was in his early twenties. In it Camus laid the foundation for The Stranger, focusing in both works on an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood. He also revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later fiction. For if A Happy Death is the study of a rule-bound being shattering the fetters of his existence, it is also a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man. As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice Mersault, to his victim’s house—and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through states of exile, hedonism, privation, and death—it gives us a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Translated from the French by Richard Howard.
  • WINNER | 1957
    Nobel Prize
Born in Algeria in 1913, ALBERT CAMUS published The Stranger--now one of the most widely read novels of this century--in 1942. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident. LAURA MARRIS is a writer and translator. Her book-length translations include Louis Guilloux's novel Blood Dark, which was short-listed for the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her translation of Jean-Yves Frétigné's biography of Gramsci is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2021. She teaches creative writing at the University at Buffalo. View titles by Albert Camus

About

Winner of the Nobel Prize 

Camus wrote A Happy Death, his first novel, when he was in his early twenties. In it Camus laid the foundation for The Stranger, focusing in both works on an Algerian clerk who kills a man in cold blood. He also revealed himself to an extent that he never would in his later fiction. For if A Happy Death is the study of a rule-bound being shattering the fetters of his existence, it is also a remarkably candid portrait of its author as a young man. As the novel follows the protagonist, Patrice Mersault, to his victim’s house—and then, fleeing, in a journey that takes him through states of exile, hedonism, privation, and death—it gives us a glimpse into the imagination of one of the great writers of the twentieth century. Translated from the French by Richard Howard.

Awards

  • WINNER | 1957
    Nobel Prize

Author

Born in Algeria in 1913, ALBERT CAMUS published The Stranger--now one of the most widely read novels of this century--in 1942. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. On January 4, 1960, he was killed in a car accident. LAURA MARRIS is a writer and translator. Her book-length translations include Louis Guilloux's novel Blood Dark, which was short-listed for the 2018 Oxford-Weidenfeld Translation Prize. Her translation of Jean-Yves Frétigné's biography of Gramsci is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press in 2021. She teaches creative writing at the University at Buffalo. View titles by Albert Camus

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