Showing posts with label intro. Show all posts
Showing posts with label intro. Show all posts

Sunday, April 12, 2009

the outsider introduction.

The stranger outsider is a novel by nobel-prize winning author Albert Camus. It is based on the life a middle aged man called Meursault, who in the heat of the moment (no pun intended), gunned down an Arab. The novel moves on to his trial and subsequent debate. I will not diverge further information because: I don't want to ruin it and I haven't read that far yet.

It was orginially written in French and it is known for its thoroughly descriptive passages and existentialist nature: even though Camus denies it. The translation we are reading was formualted by Joseph Laredo for Hamish Hamilton in 1982 and was published by the Penguin publishing conglomerate a year later.


Born in the November of 1913, in Mondovi, Algeria to a, excuse my french, Pied-Noir family, Albert Camus rose from the ashes of poverty and went to the University of Algiers, where he studied Philosophy. He also played Goal-keeper for the football team. Camus joined the Communist party but was later dismissed and accused of being a Trotskyist. He was later linked with anarchist movements. He moved to Paris to work for the Paris Soir newspaper agency.During WWII he was part of the French resistance and founded,and wrote for, the under-ground newspaper: Combat. He won the Nobel prize for Literature in 1957. 3 years later, Camus sadly died, with his friend, in a car crash in 1960, at the age of 46. In his pocket: a train ticket. He had planned to travel by train that day.

Note: A link to the novel online is added to the sidebar, however one should note that the translations, like the Ivan Denisovich version, are slightly different. However, the subject matter remains the same.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich



The first book we read for our world-lit essay was "A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. This novel about the life of the GULAG prisoners sparked controversy in 1960s Russia and today is one of the most celebrated novels concerning GULAG literature. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn is an nobel prize winning russian author and has revolutionized Soviet-era literature.

The novel focuses around Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, an average zek living an average day. The novels gives an insight of the life in the GULAGs: A prison system that consumed 12,000,000 lives in its operation period.

Copyright © 2009 ib world literature. All rights reserved. Theme by Laptop Geek. | Bloggerized by FalconHive.