Rebel

Translated by Anthony Bower With an Introduction by Oliver Todd
‘A conscience with style’ V.S. Pritchett

The Rebel (1951) is Camus’s ‘attempt to understand the time I live in’ and a brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt. Here he makes a daring critique of communism – how it had gone wrong behind the Iron Curtain and the resulting totalitarian regimes. And he questions two events held sacred by the left wing – the French Revolution of 1789 and the Russian Revolution of 1917 – that had resulted, he believed, in the use of terrorism as a political instrument. In this towering intellectual document, Camus argues that hope for the future lies in revolt with revolution – a chance to achieve change without losing our freedom. ‘The last French intellectual to take the side of humanity and talk its language . . . a figure of immense moral stature’ Sunday Times Winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature

Format: Paperback
Pages: 272
Imprint: Penguin Classics
Publication date: 07/12/2000
Series: Penguin Modern Classics