Albert Camus was never abandoned by his readers. Camus is enormously read. He's the highest selling author in the entire Gallimard collection, and has been for some years now. Sales haven't ever stopped, so to talk about rediscovering him would suggest that he isn't read anymore and that's not true.

Femininity, yes, effectively there is more in The First Man, not only in terms of women but stylistically, in its elements, the notes he wrote. You can see a real love story in it, a childhood love story, [Albert] Camus' first. Meursault [protagonist of The Outsider] and Marie were never up to much really. There is Dora in The Just and others in his plays, but they aren't so well known.

I think for [Albert] Camus his mother was more than just that. She's love, absolute love. That's why it's written for her, dedicated to 'you who will never be able to read this book'.

There are those who will find [Albert Camus] notions about absurdity appealing, and others who will be drawn by the solar side of his work, about Algeria, the heat and so on.

Just after the war, the liberation of 1945, [Albert] Camus was well known, well loved by [Jean-Paul ] Sartre and all the intellectuals of that generation.

[Albert Camus] was completely intransigent, and that's not at all a neutrality. It's combat, it's a man who involved himself, committed himself.

I think [Albert Camus] wanted to write something to explain who he was, and how he was different from the age that had been conferred upon him.