La Mort heureuse

First edition, one of 106 numbered copies on Hollande paper, constituting the deluxe issue.
Fine copy of this important work in Albert Camus's literary career. Although published eleven years after his death, it was in fact his first novel, written and revised between 1936 and 1938 before being abandoned in favour of The Stranger, for which it is regarded as the precursor.

Despite its markedly different plot, in which the murder is committed at the victim's request and Patrice Mersault is far more expressive than his younger literary counterpart, Meursault, A Happy Death offers a revealing insight into the heart of Camus's philosophical concerns. It brings to the fore his earliest preoccupation, the absence of guilt, which emerges here as a first expression of the absurdity of the human condition.