(New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972).

FIRST EDITION. Albert Camus’s first novel, written in French in the 1930’s and published in English for the first time here.
“In many interesting ways A Happy Death foreshadows The Stranger. But its most striking difference - beyond its differences of plot and intention - is that here Camus reveals more of himself than in his later, more mythic fiction. He seems very close to his protagonist. Through the young Patrice one feels in touch with the young Camus - his joy in the sea, sun, and open skies of his native Algeria, his relationships with women, his need of them and his detachment from them, the intense alienation he experienced as a traveler in Central Europe, his sense of the ways in which poverty can nourish or destroy. And it is from his own early intimations of death, movingly evoked, that this novel draws the concern - how is one to live in order to have a happy death, the right death -which is at the root of its drama.”-Publisher. Item #34800

First American Edition. 8vo, publisher’s original white linen, lettered in gILT on the spine and upper cover, in the original pictorially illustrated dustjacket. 192 pp. A very fine copy.