The First Man

Jacques Cormery visits the grave of the father he never knew and realizes that his father died younger than Jacques is now. That discovery sends him back through family stories and his own memories of a poor childhood in Belcourt, a working-class district of Algiers.

The novel reconstructs a home ruled by poverty, silence and Jacques's strict grandmother. His mother is partly deaf and speaks little; his father died in the First World War. School offers Jacques a path beyond the neighborhood when his teacher Louis Germain recognizes his ability and helps him compete for a scholarship.

Because the manuscript was unfinished, the narrative does not resolve every line. Notes, repetitions and alternative possibilities remain visible. The draft also enters the difficult history of French settlement in Algeria without completing the larger reckoning Camus appears to have planned.

In 1913, Henri Cormery and his pregnant wife Lucie arrive at an Algerian farm where Henri will work. Their son Jacques is born that night. A year later Henri is wounded at the Battle of the Marne and dies in France.

As an adult, Jacques visits Henri's grave at Saint-Brieuc and begins investigating a father who left almost no personal record. The search opens into memories of Belcourt: the cramped apartment shared with his mother, brother, grandmother and uncle; games in the street and sea; punishment at home; hunger; and the embarrassment of having no money.

At school, Monsieur Bernard—modeled on Camus's teacher Louis Germain—persuades Jacques's family to let him pursue a scholarship. Education separates Jacques from the illiterate mother he loves even as it gives him the future that made the book possible.