A Short Guide to Towns Without a Past

by Albert Camus, Ellen Conroy Kennedy (Translator), Justin O'Brien (Translator)

a collection of short stories by French novelist Albert Camus

Best known for his existentialist novel The Outsider, set in French-occupied Algeria, Albert Camus was profoundly influenced by the landscapes, towns and traditions of his youth. Selected here are some of his finest personal essays about Algeria and its environs, including the luminous ‘Nuptials at Tipasa’, one of his earliest works where he developed the themes that would inform his later philosophy: to thrive now, without hope for paradise, as mortal life alone can be worthwhile.


Series: Penguin Archive


A new thematic collection of stories taken out of several of of his original works:
L'envers et l'endroit (1937)
Noces (1939)
L été (1954)

Genres: Nonfiction, Classics

109 pages, Paperback

Published April 17, 2025

About the 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

Reviews

[Caitlin Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

perfect for reading whilst traveling in Europe/performatively smoking a cigarette in Paris at a cafe with a spritz (not that I did that, or anything…). Genuinely though the place writing here was beautiful and Camus’ voice endearing and charming and surprisingly funny—I didn’t much care for “the stranger” when I read it but this book made me more personally affectionate for Camus.

[Kate · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in too many fits and starts, but I really liked the bits I did concentrate on. There were two highlights, for me:
(1) the idea that complaining about work covers a secret gratitude that work excuses us from having to feel the sorrows of experience too deeply. Camus's narrator says something like: 'I dreamt of writing novels with characters who would say "My mother's died, but thankfully I have the factory to go to, where I have lots of orders to dispatch".
(2) the idea that it is more painful not to love than not to be loved in return. Camus's narrator says: 'In not loving there is misery; in not being loved there is only misfortune'. I think it's right, except that perhaps not loving anyone is a better position from which to find someone who you love and who loves you than unreciprocated love is. Maybe the perfect needs to be the enemy of the good here.

[Ági · Rating 2 out of 5]

on the one hand it's the ultimate mediterranean read that dissects my unexamined love for these places
on the other it's the same unstructured inner thoughts and unfinished metaphors repeated over again about the mediterranean state of mind - one sentence lands so sharp and pensive and the next sidestracks into something painfully dull forgetting what it wanted to say

maybe im just not patient enough for camus' brilliance yet

[Yeshahajoey · Rating 4 out of 5]

Am besten zu genießen, wenn man gerade nicht zuhause ist.

[lucia · Rating 4 out of 5]

“salzburg would be peaceful without mozart”

[Luke Glasspool · Rating 4 out of 5]

Super glad my driller didn’t end up in marketing for travel agencies bc they could never spit the bars that Albert spat frfr

[Irene · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love the way Camus writes. I had to underline many parts because I found a lot of his thoughts interesting and worth revisiting. Nice, chill read. Would be a great companion for anyone travelling somewhere in the Mediterranean!

[clarice chan · Rating 4 out of 5]

camus is a better ranter of philosophy than descriptor of place. or maybe it's just me

[Christopher Walthorne · Rating 5 out of 5]

A love letter to life.

[Frunku · Rating 5 out of 5]

Extatische, en weelderig geschreven literatuur over zijn grandiose dagen langs de middelandse zee. Heel duidelijk waar het absurdisme van Camus vandaan kwam.

[Julie W · Rating 4 out of 5]

I wish for my future self when she finds herself happily strolling around a city in Italy to pass by a bookstore and pick up this book and stand in the same spot at the same coffeeshop as Camus once did gazing at the beautiful basilica in front of him

[Mason · Rating 5 out of 5]

"All I know is that this sky will last longer than I shall. And what can I call eternity except what will continue after my death?"

"What denies me in this life is first of all what kills me. Everything that exalts life at the same time increases its absurdity...only one thing is more tragic than suffering, and that is the life of a happy man"

"From the mass of human evils swarming in Pandora's box, the Greeks brought out hope at the very last, as the most terrible of all. I don't know any symbol more moving. For hope, contrary to popular belief, is tantamount to resignation. And to live is not to be resigned"

"These twin truths of the body and the moment, at the spectacle of beauty – how can we not cling to them as to the only happiness we can expect, one that will enchant us but at the same time perish?"

"Myths are to religion what poetry is to truth: ridiculous masks laid upon the passion to live"

[L]

I’m not reading the full book only the title essay but this is the only one that comes up. And I’m marking the essays as read individually because I’m not reading the book (Albert Camus personal writings) as a book but more of a collection. No one cares but I care so I don’t care

[Ben Ughetti · Rating 4 out of 5]

Critics of Camus often suggest that his philosophical work has a lot to be desired for even if this is true his essay work and appreciation for everyday life is second to none.

[ayman · Rating 4 out of 5]

when your opps’ prose is so poetic 💔

[lovelystranger · Rating 4 out of 5]

So far I haven’t been the essay type of person but I was missing out!!!!!!!!

These really moved me. Not just the literal way to describe the feeling one gets when visiting their home towns but knowing that Camus was born in and grew up in Algeria makes it hit even closer to home.
I liked the way there was an underlying hope in each essay to someday find something to hold on to and to *live* continuously while at the same time having the knowledge (though just subconsciously) that this will never happen.
It might be the desire to love, be loved, love ethically or just be „happy“ with what one has.
Furthermore the balance that is always kept. To speak metaphorically: there is no light without dark.
One cannot feel love of something without feeling despair at some times.

I feel that there is already this underlying philosophy that becomes more defined and prevalent in his later works.

There was also some criticism towards the french occupation of Algeria (at least that’s what I deduced from the mentioning of hatred, violence and the description of reigning over towns). Which reflects the distress a child must’ve felt when being born into occupied land.
The discrepancy between loving that land and feeling like it’s „home“ and knowing about the horrors surrounding the opportunity to call this place home.
(don‘t turn this into a „what about the white people who lived on colonialised lands“ this is just what I felt through his writing about the country and its cities)

All in all would recommend reading these!!!
I might also have to reread because i‘m sure there are many many many….. things I missed

[amy sq ༉‧₊˚. · Rating 5 out of 5]

"But perhaps one day, when we are ready to die of ignorance and exhaustion, I shall be able to renounce our shrieking tombs, to go and lie down in the valley, under the unchanging light, and learn for one last time what I know."

A collection of short essays in which encapsulates seemingly the beginning of Camus' absurdist views, developing slowly but surely throughout the book. With such detailed and intimate descriptions of these towns and landscapes, it lured me in and helped visually create an idea of 1940s French-occupied Algeria.

"Can one catalogue the charms of a woman one loves dearly? No one loves her all of a piece, if I may use the expression, with one or two precise reasons for tenderness, like a favourite pout or a particular way of shaking the head."

I spent most of my time reading this while tanning on the beach on the coast of Eastern Spain, accompanied by instrumental jazz and a cigarette in my other hand, perhaps as Camus intended. I may be biased in my opinion as I thoroughly enjoy anything Camus writes, for he writes in such a manner that is both easily digestible and literarily enthralling.

"But for those who know what it is to be torn between yes and no, between noon and midnight, between revolt and love, and for those who love funeral pyres along the shore, a flame lies waiting in Algeria"

[Manya Saxena · Rating 5 out of 5]

Reading Camus is like stepping barefoot onto soil that remembers what history tried to erase. A Short Guide to Towns Without a Past is not just a book, it is a reckoning with the wounds of colonization, the quiet erasures, the silences where stories should have been. Camus does not fill those silences with noise; instead, he gives them melody. His prose builds a world so sacred and pure that even towns stripped of their pasts seem to hum with an ancient tune that refuses to die.

The struggle of colonization is not romanticized here. It is felt in the hollowness of squares with no monuments, in the dust of abandoned roads, in the voices that never had the chance to echo. And yet, through his writing, Camus restores a kind of dignity, a tender reverence that says: even absence has weight, even erasure has a rhythm.

I have always turned to his words for inspiration, but this book awakened something different in me. It made me want to write, not polished arguments or perfected lines, but everything: the fleeting thoughts, the half-formed feelings, the fragments that might not make sense to anyone else. Because the truth is, the feelings themselves will. And that is enough.

Camus teaches us that even when history has been stolen, the pulse of a place remains. In this short guide, he gives us not a map but a song. And it is unforgettable.

[Sibrich · Rating 4 out of 5]

The way I bought this book:

Earlier this year, I saw a friend of mine reading it. Intrigued, I took a picture of it. I'm always fascinated by books about places.
At the same time, I was making this film about notebooks, Wie schrijft die weet, and while researching, I read the essay Camus Notebooks by Susan Sontag. It was a great inspiration.
Later in the year, when that film is finished, it's going to be shown at my local filmfestival, a big deal to me. I am stressed and have a terrible morning, so in the hour before the award ceremony, I go out to the local bookstore and buy myself a present, this book.
I didn't win.
It didn't hit me until that evening that Camus Notebooks was, in part, talking about these writings, about this author. And I had, in fact, bought a book related to the film that I was celebrating for that weekend.

Things align sometimes in weird ways.

Anyway, I loved this book. Especially the chapter on Florence, a city where I turned 18 and always felt like I became a person there. This book felt like it understood that feeling of what a place can be, is.

[Ruben van der Luit · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you haven’t read Camus’ post mortem-released autobiography The First Man, do so before starting this; I didn’t plan this myself, but did so serendipitously – and I’m glad I did.

The First Man gives you an incredible insight in the upbringing of Camus, his academic beginnings, his love for life, and especially into his mind through the many footnotes of edits that were never made due to Camus’ passing. It’s like being a fly on the wall during his writing process.

What does A Short Guide to Towns Without a Past have to do with this? It paints a vivid picture of Camus’ love for Algiers. The book also shows novel insights in his philosophy of absurdism, especially in the final chapter Return to Tipasa. As always, there’s Camus’ lovely style of writing to enjoy; I highly recommend pairing these two books.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Camus transports us back to French Algeria through this collection of short letters. Just like the Outsider, they are beautifully written and really make you feel like you are in the places being describes whilst at the same time, making you appreciate the beauty in the small everyday details.

[Balya Sulistiyono · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm going to be reductive: this is about nothing—written with certain passion, love, and intensity. But that's just Camus' existentialism. The lots of you who knows how to be present know the nothing I'm talking about. Everybody should write about nothing and the experience around it more often.

[Dries Van Den Elzen · Rating 3 out of 5]

I enjoyed the last story, ‘return to Tipasa’, most. In this story, Camus shares a more personal memory of his youth.

[Isabella F · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5

[Tate0108 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Camus speaks of a love I never want to unknow, and I think we all need

[Joe Parr · Rating 4 out of 5]

good preparation material before I go and spend a week staring at and appreciating the sea, something Mr Albert seemed to enjoy

[William Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Prose that synergises with our internal voices.

[Lyrkan Thuery · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'll reread when I've developed my frontal lobe

[Tessa · Rating 3 out of 5]

camus and paolo sorrentino would vibe so hard and that's not really a compliment

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.25