FILIAL SENTIMENTS OF A PARRICIDE by Marcel Proust In this extraordinarily sensitive and penetrating psychological story, a series of letters from a family friend reveals far more than expected in hindsight. AN INCIDENT IN THE REIGN OF TERROR by Honore de Balzac A mysterious man follows a nun to her hiding place in order to say a midnight mass. THE WALL by Jean Paul Sartre The master of existentialism takes us on a journey into raw fear as felt by three men facing execution during the Spanish Civil War. OMPHALE by Theophile Gautier A delightful tale of a young man's unusual first love. FATHER GAUCHET'S ELIXIR by Alphonse Daudet In this hilarious tale, a remote monastery in the French countryside decides to go into the spirits business. . .alcoholic spirits that is. IN THE MOONLIGHT by Guy de Maupassant When a French priest finds his niece involved in a romance, his religious obsessions threaten to erupt into violence. An epiphany intervenes. THE PROCURATOR OF JUDEA by Anatole France Set in the ancient Roman Empire, this is an intriguing conversation between two well connected Romans, one of whom is Pontius Pilate. THE GUEST by Albert Camus Set in French colonial Algiers, this is a story of how a French teacher is made to suddenly experience the fear and hostility of being an outsider in a hostile land. THE LITTLE BOUILLOUX GIRL by Colette Growing to womanhood in a provincial French village is the subject of this marvelous story. THE DUEL by Alexandre Dumas The master of the adventure novel tells a tale of an unusual duel. But the ultimate victims of this affair turn out to be not only both the duelists, but a third party, as well. THE WALKER-THROUGH-WALLS by Marcel Ayme This comic tale is about a man with miraculous powers. At first, he is content to play practical jokes, then he moves on to burglary and high romance. RUNNING TIME ⇒ 5hrs. and 58mins. ©Public domain; 1939 Jean Paul Sartre; 1957 Albert Camus; 1943 Marcel Ayme (P)2004 Audio Connoisseur
Author
Works, such as the novels The Stranger (1942) and The Plague (1947), of Algerian-born French writer and philosopher Albert Camus concern the absurdity of the human condition; he won the Nobel Prize of 1957 for literature. Origin and his experiences of this representative of non-metropolitan literature in the 1930s dominated influences in his thought and work. He also adapted plays of Pedro Calderón de la Barca, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Requiem for a Nun of William Faulkner. One may trace his enjoyment of the theater back to his membership in l'Equipe, an Algerian group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest, he came at the age of 25 years in 1938; only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation served as a columnist for the newspaper Combat. The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds notion of acceptance of the absurd of Camus with "the total absence of hope, which has nothing to do with despair, a continual refusal, which must not be confused with renouncement - and a conscious dissatisfaction." Meursault, central character of L'Étranger (The Stranger), 1942, illustrates much of this essay: man as the nauseated victim of the absurd orthodoxy of habit, later - when the young killer faces execution - tempted by despair, hope, and salvation. Besides his fiction and essays, Camus very actively produced plays in the theater (e.g., Caligula, 1944). The time demanded his response, chiefly in his activities, but in 1947, Camus retired from political journalism. Doctor Rieux of La Peste (The Plague), 1947, who tirelessly attends the plague-stricken citizens of Oran, enacts the revolt against a world of the absurd and of injustice, and confirms words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them." People also well know La Chute (The Fall), work of Camus in 1956. Camus authored L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom) in 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He styled of great purity, intense concentration, and rationality. Camus died at the age of 46 years in a car accident near Sens in le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. Chinese 阿尔贝·加缪
