first human

(The First Man) is the draft of Albert Camus's last work, which death did not allow him to revise and review. It was Albert Camus's last novel. This unfinished novel was not published until 1994, and only the first part had been written; only two chapters of the second part were completed, and the third part is completely missing. This part was undoubtedly reworked by the author. Thus, this novel became Camus's testament and his most important autobiographical work because it evokes his childhood and youth. If the essence of the work is autobiographical, the form is not; the autobiographical covenant is absent. This is a third-person story, and the characters have pseudonyms. Camus's alter ego is called Jacques Cormery. Cormery was the first name of his paternal grandmother, an implicit reference to the autobiographical dimension. If Camus wrote his autobiographical work in the form of a third-person novel, it was precisely to give it a dimension that transcends the private. "e;The First Man"e; is a novel about return: a return to the world of Algerian childhood and youth, a return to the mother, a search for the father, origins, colonial history, and the translation of the myth of origin. If we distinguish between two main types of myths: myths of origin and myths of the future, Camus's work undoubtedly falls into the first category. While Camus agreed with Sartre in observing that the present is dominated by a war of all against all, he nevertheless believed that a return is possible.