Forget Camus: Confronting the Humanist Myth

PEELING BACK THE MYTHS OBSCURING FRANCE'S ALL-TIME MOST POPULAR AUTHOR

Albert Camus is broadly regarded as a philosopher of our time: a freedom fighter and a pioneering anti-colonialist. Oliver Gloag rejects the simplicity of this persistent image. A careful reading of Camus's three major novels - The Stranger, The Plague, and The First Man - reveals a deep-seated attachment to colonialism and the colonial way of life. Forget Camus argues that its subject's contradictions are central to understanding both his work and the meaning behind his enduring popularity. The legacy of the most widely read Frenchman in the world has been co-opted to present a flattering and false version of colonial history and is an obstacle to France coming to terms with its neocolonial present.

Forget Camus is a book about colonial history and a nation's literature that lays bare the ideological contradictions of French society past and present.

Author: Oliver Gloag
Publisher: Verso
Published: 07/28/2026
Pages: 144
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.30lbs
Size: 8.20h x 5.50w x 0.50d
ISBN13: 9781836742708
ISBN10: 1836742703
BISAC Categories:
- Philosophy | Individual Philosophers
- Philosophy | Movements | Existentialism
- History | Europe | France

About the Author
Oliver Gloag is a writer affiliated with Duke's Institute for Critical Theory. He was born in New York and grew up in France. He has a JD from Tulane University and a Ph.D in romance studies from Duke. His focus is on colonial representations in French literature. He lives in Brooklyn.