欧宝娱乐

As with most Camus, this book is, in the course of a hundred or so pages, an entire decade of therapy. If you don't feel worse鈥攜et oddly optimistic鈥攁bout yourself and people in general after this book, you're either inhuman, or you're the exact person this book was meant for.

Someone once extolled this book as "an examination of modern conscience," and it was through this lens that I first began this work. That's accurate, I suppose, to a point, but to leave interpretation at that would be to rob this book of the most vital, living, breathing readings.

On the surface, the book presents as a dialogue (presented as a monologue鈥攈ow's that for queer?), a "confession" of one man to another over the course of five days. Each day the narrator, Jean-Baptise Clemence, tells more of the story of his life as a lawyer, his (existential!) crisis with life in general, and the resolution he's come to now, so many years later.

I think my prior study of Existentialism helped understand this book, and thence a healthy portion of my enjoyment, but a deep knowledge of Camus is not necessary.