Nuptials
Albert Camus
Nuptials
The next early collection shifts the emphasis from family poverty and loneliness toward Mediterranean landscape and physical joy.
Read our takeThe Wrong Side and the Right Side
Albert Camus
The Wrong Side and the Right Side
by Albert Camus
Five early essays in which poverty, silence, sunlight and death already form the vocabulary of the later books.
- 1937
About Albert Camus
The story, briefly
Spoiler-freeAlbert Camus’s first published book, issued in Algiers by Edmond Charlot in 1937. Its five short essays move between a poor home in Algiers, old age, travel in Prague and the Mediterranean landscape. Camus later distrusted the book’s awkwardness but said it contained the source of everything he wrote afterward.
The story, in more detail
The five essays move between autobiographical memory and travel. Albert Camus writes about an elderly woman whose family listens without hearing her, a silent mother and severe grandmother in a poor Algiers home, and a disturbing stay in Prague marked by illness and isolation.
The final pieces return to Mediterranean light and to the paired conditions named by the title: deprivation and beauty, loneliness and connection, death and the physical world. Camus later wrote that the collection was awkward but contained the source of his later work.
The five essays
'Irony' presents scenes of old age, family indifference and the young narrator's encounter with death.
'Between Yes and No' returns to the poor Algiers home of a quiet mother and commanding grandmother, establishing the family material Camus later revisited in The First Man.
'Death in the Soul' recounts a lonely, anxious journey through Prague and a release found on reaching Italy.
'Love of Life' joins travel, desire and the recognition of death. The title essay, 'The Wrong Side and the Right Side,' draws the collection's opposites together without pretending they can be separated cleanly.
Why we recommend it
It contains the beginning of the later work
The mother, grandmother, poor home, travel anxiety and Mediterranean light all return in more developed form across Camus's career.
The roughness has documentary value
The young writer has not yet mastered the spare control of The Stranger, so readers can see him discovering the material and contrasts he will keep using.
What this book explores
Timeline
1935–1936
Camus drafts the essays from family memory and recent travel.
1937
Edmond Charlot publishes L’Envers et l’Endroit in Algiers.
1958
Camus writes a new preface and allows the collection to be reissued in France.
1967
The essays appear in English in Lyrical and Critical Essays.
Book editions
Paperback
- Paperback
- Gallimard
- 1937
- Paperback
- Vintage
- 1970
- 9780394708522
- Ellen Conroy Kennedy
Reader reviews
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The First Man
Albert Camus
The First Man
The unfinished late novel returns to the same mother, grandmother and Algiers childhood with the scope of a full family history.
Read our takeThe Wrong Side and the Right Side: frequently asked questions
What is The Wrong Side and the Right Side about?
It is a collection of five autobiographical and travel essays about poverty, old age, family silence, loneliness, physical beauty and death.
When was The Wrong Side and the Right Side published?
Edmond Charlot first published L’Envers et l’Endroit in Algiers in 1937.
Should I read The Wrong Side and the Right Side first?
Usually not. Start with The Stranger, then read The Wrong Side and the Right Side when you want this part of Camus’s work.
Is it Albert Camus's first book?
Yes. It was his first published book, issued when he was twenty-three.
How many essays are in the collection?
There are five essays: 'Irony,' 'Between Yes and No,' 'Death in the Soul,' 'Love of Life' and 'The Wrong Side and the Right Side.'
How does it connect to The First Man?
Both return to Camus's poor childhood household in Algiers, especially the quiet mother and strict grandmother. The First Man develops that material at much greater length.