Penguin Modern Classics: Rebel

Camus described this brilliant essay on the nature of human revolt as ‘an attempt to understand the time I live in’. Published in 1951, it expresses his horror at the events of a period which ‘within fifty years, uproots, enslaves, or kills seventy million human beings’. Hope for the future, he argues, lies in revolt, which unlike revolution is a spontaneous response to injustice and a chance to achieve change without giving up individual or collective freedom. The Rebel created an irreconcilable rift between Camus and his friend Jean-Paul Sarte who bittely attacked Camus for his criticism of communism.