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Here's the review I wrote of the book. At the end I speculate why aren't the Algerians in the book. Any one got any insight on that?
The First Man is the story of Camus� childhood in Algeria. It is both, curiously enough, biography and autobiography, telling us his story from inside � voicing the intensity and exuberance of his experiences � and from the outside � observing himself and those in his life with the distance of a compassionate third party voice.

It begins, told from the point of view of 40-year old Jacques Cormery, with an imagining of his birth and then moves on to his search for his father’s grave in Saint-Breuic. Camus was a year old when his father died in WWI in 1914. As he looks at the gravestone, he realises his father was only 29 when he died, considerably younger than he is himself. And the wave of tenderness and pity that at once filled his heart was not the stirring of the soul that leads the son to the memory of the vanished father, but the overwhelming compassion that a grown man feels for an unjustly murdered child� There was no order but only madness and chaos when the son was older than the father.

This same compassion informs the description of his family: his mother especially for whom he felt an intense poignant love, but also his grandmother and his uncle. These three, together with the rarely mentioned older brother, were the family he grew up among in Algiers. His mother was partially deaf and his uncle completely so. His grandmother was the rock on which their life was built, a life of extreme poverty and hard work. All the adults worked every day, or nearly so. There were no holidays, no trips to belle France, no consciousness even of being French. ‘What is our country?� Jacques asks his mother. ‘I don’t know,� she said. ‘It is France.� ‘Oh, yes.� And she seemed relieved. They had no time for reflection nor leisure nor religion nor even memories. …there was only the mystery of poverty that creates beings without names and without a past, that sends them into the vast throng of the nameless dead�

But Jacques had time for friends, other boys he played with, describing the exuberance of their games played under the hot Algerian sun in the ubiquitous dust, or sneaking off to swim in the sea. Jacques and his brother went to school, but the adults were illiterate. Four boys were lovingly coached by M. Bernard for the scholarship exams for the lycée. Three of them succeed, including Jacques. It is there Jacques comes to realise he knows only half the world. There is another where poverty does not rule, where people have histories, homes in France, extended families; where people have the power to make choices.

His final comments are very raw � the book was never published in his lifetime, and so I like to think perhaps he left his strongly felt emotions show until such time as he came to edit them, which he thankfully never did.
…he had been born in a land without forefathers and without memory, where the annihilation of those who preceded him was still more final and where old age finds none of the solace in melancholy that it does in civilized lands.
He goes on to say he was left with the blind hope that this obscure force that for so many years had raised him above the daily routine, nourished him unstintingly, and been equal to the most difficult circumstances � that, as it had with endless generosity given him reason to live, it would also give him reason to grow old and die without rebellion.

Touched and warmed by Camus� description of his early life as I was, it was impossible to not notice one glaring omission. The Algerians. The Arab people he lived amongst, mentioned only by-the-way as if they were the foreigners, the tram drivers, the shopkeepers. Towards the end of the book, he mentions a visit to his mother in Algiers � for he now resides in Paris � where she still lives with her deaf brother in the same tiny apartment he grew up in. No date is given, but it must have been in the 1950’s and, while he is there, there are explosions close by. His mother comments that they are frequent. The Algerian war for independence from France between 1954 and 1962 might have come up here for a mention, perhaps too, his reflection on what it was to be French in an Arab land, but no, nothing is said. Camus was a very politically aware man, first a communist (at one time a member of the Algerian Communist Party), later an anarchist, writing for anarchist publications and involved in various social revolutions. So this strange omission cannot be for lack of political awareness. If he had completed the book for publication, or lived to see an independent Algeria (he died in 1960), perhaps then he might have told us more of his relations with the Arabs he grew up amongst.

Fascinating comment. I have not as yet read the book and will be doing so shrtly. Glad you pointed it out as I shall now be paying attention to it.

It is an interesting point because Camus, while seeing himself as an internationalist, wanted very much to see Algeria as just another department of France. He wanted to see all Algerians treated as equal to all other French citizens. At the same time, he raised a great deal of controvery when the war was on by saying that he would go to war against the Algerians himself to protect his mother. His ideals and his reality obviously clashed.

Further, although his family was quite poor, he was able to access an education beyond his mother's means largely because he was French as opposed to Algerian. I don't know that any Algerians ever played any more than a background role in his life growing up in Algeria.

It has also been noted by others in GR while discussing The Stranger that although the book takes place in Algeria, Algerians are not really present except as Merseault's victim. The characters with whom he interacts are all of European background. I have to wonder if, while growing up in a French enclave in Algeria, Camus never really had contact with, nor gave a great deal of thought to, his Algerian countrymen. I would be interested to see other's comments.

Your comment has sent me looking for more information about Camus. It seems as well as, at various times, a communist, an anarchist, a humanist and a pacifist, he was anti-USSR and anti-USA, a member of the French resistance in WWII and advocated the French war in Algeria. He also, it appears, couldn't keep it in his trousers. A complex man! Maybe several men?!
I found this in Wikipedia:
When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus was confronted with a moral dilemma. He identified with the pied-noirs such as his own parents and defended the French government's actions against the revolt. He argued that the Algerian uprising was an integral part of the 'new Arab imperialism' led by Egypt and an 'anti-Western' offensive orchestrated by Russia to 'encircle Europe' and 'isolate the United States'.[13] Although favouring greater Algerian autonomy or even federation, though not full-scale independence, he believed that the pied-noirs and Arabs could co-exist. During the war he advocated a civil truce that would spare the civilians, which was rejected by both sides, who regarded it as foolish. Behind the scenes, he began to work for imprisoned Algerians who faced the death penalty.

Thank you for the comments. I believe that more than a political activist, Camus (who left political journalism - and was curiously advised by his teacher, in the note at the end of the book, to leave that struggle for the sake of his family's well-being) was above all a humanist who I believe tried to reach a certain level of humanization and sense of power to people before we enter any realm of particularism or pro or anti. His most asked questions of existentialism and search for happiness are tasks deeply entrenched in each one of us, either more inclined to the left or to the right. I think that this book, which would mark the beginning of a trilogy marks has written only the pages where he puts that to evidence, by showing that when we are kids no matter the religion political position and even social class are things that we don´t control our will to conquer all the world and all the positivity that passes later to nostalgia and a sense of belonging related to each one of us. That feeling is usually elapsed and originates the fight for power (but a small power - compared to the one that we feel that we have when we are children) and that transports into political activism which is what would come next in the book and is really "nonsense" compared to the humanization we feel as children.