Splinters

Teeth on edge time, as French President Nicolas Sarkozy seeks to cash in on the reputation of the great Albert Camus by sticking him in the Parthenon.

This is not just dunderheaded literary cred chasing from Sarko, but quite a sneaky and shrewd move. Albert Camus holds an analogous position in France to that of George Orwell in Britain: a man and author of the Left, but whose devastating criticism of totalitarian Communism has led the Right to continually try and claim him for their own.

The thing is, Camus, like Orwell, remained a socialist, and  Jeanyves Guérin is quite correct in saying Camus would probably  take a remarkably dim view of the proceedings.

 I love him by the way, though I've not actually read him since my teens. I adored The Fall even more than  The Outsider. One to revisit, or to leave in the sainted memory of youth....? Anyhow, why not catch up with Russell Wilkinson's old interview with Albert's daughter Catherine on Spike?