Blog

Camus anniversary remembered

Recently, a friend sent me this photo of the Camus gravesite in Provence, which is one of the best I have seen. It reminded me of all the ceremonies and rethinking that marked the 50th anniversary of Camus's death in 2010, including in his native land, Algeria, where there is now an elaborate 5 to 11-day English-speaking Albert Camus tour. It takes a traveler around Algiers -- his childhood quarter of Belcourt, the lycée, casbah, mosques and the Roman ruins at nearby Tipasa -- and then on to Oran, setting of The Plague, his apartment, the seafront, cafes and museums, and then Drean, formerly Mondovi, his birthplace, and the family home, with visits to sites commemorating St. Augustine too. Also on the circuit are significant scenes from Camus's other novels The Stranger and The First Man, a truly intriguing and ambitious tribute to an enduring literary hero.

New Algerian Film Nominated for 2011 Oscar

Our Buildings Ourselves

Some new thoughts on where were live and how our apartments and houses shape our lives.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/19/our-buildings-ourselves/

Maison de la Radio interview

Interviewed by Brent Gregston, Elizabeth Hawes talks about finding her identity in writing the life story of Camus. In the interview Hawes talks about the characters in the Camus novels and their significance to him.

Camus and the Parthenon

It has been astonishing, distressing, amusing and gratifying to follow the commotion in France over Nicolas Sarkozy’s proposal to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the death of Albert Camus, who was killed in a car crash at 46, with reburial in the Pantheon.

Listed on WBUR's Year's Best Memoirs, Mirth And Melancholy

Camus, A Romance made the list for WBUR's Year's Best Memoirs, Mirth And Melancholy. See the complete list over at WBUR.org.

Camus to the Parthenon?

To commemorate the 50th anniversary of Albert Camus’s death in January, Nicolas Sarkozy wants to honor him with a resting place in the Pantheon where great writers like Voltaire and Rousseau and Victor Hugo already lie.

Reporting back on the Camus play revival

In the production of Albert Camus’s play The Misunderstanding that is now playing in downtown New York, the audience sits so close to the stage that it could be peering in the window of the grim little country inn in Bohemia in which the action takes place. A lineup of white teacups on a rafter and a railing frames the scene, a reference to the poison tea that the innkeeper and her daughter, in their habitual way, offer a rich wayfarer before robbing and killing him.

Now a play revival

First a new movie, now a revived play. Beginning October 29th, the Flea Theatre in Tribeca, an important Off-Off Broadway stage, is hosting a production of Camus's 1944 play The Misunderstanding, about a chilling case of mistaken identity. It has been decades since I last saw it, so I will go.

Director Gianni Amelio to make movie of Camus's novel The First Man

Last night I stumbled upon the news in a cinema blog that the Italian director Gianni Amelio is making a movie of Albert Camus's last and unfinished novel The First Man, shooting it in North Africa where Camus grew up.

From Elizabeth Hawes on RedRoom

Still Following Albert Camus
My book, Camus, A Romance, came out this summer and after eight years of working on it and effectively living with Albert Camus, I find myself missing roaming around in his life and missing being in France of the 1940's and 1950's.

Q: What inspired you to write Camus, a Romance?

A. I was in France in the mid-1990’s when Camus’s daughter decided to publish his last and unfinished work, a novel entitled Le Premier Homme or The First Man. I had always loved Camus, but he was a very private man and a distant subject. Reading that book, however, which describes his childhood in Algeria in poignant detail, was like entering his life. I didn’t want to leave.

Camus, a Romance