I begin with the hunger of
Albert Camus. The philosopher, novelist, and playwright was born in French Algeria, living for much of his childhood in a home without electricity or running water. No oven — just an alcohol stove. No toilets — just holes in the masonry. And no father: his dad, Lucien, was killed by shrapnel when Camus was a baby. In
The First Man, Camus wrote of his mother Catherine's "gnarled" hands, broken by years of scrubbing floors and wringing laundry. He described his grandmother's whip, the bull pizzle, used when the boy did not obey.
But this was no simple lament. Camus also offered his childhood pleasures: the Mediterranean sea, the smell of dirt in autumn rains, soccer matches, the stoic manliness of sailors, even the stink of urine after days of banal office labor...