Goodreads helps you keep track of books you want to read.

Start by marking “The Fall” as Want to Read:

Other editions

Enlarge cover

Rate this book

Clear rating

1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

Open Preview

The Fall

Albert Camus,

Justin O'Brien (Translator)

4.04 · Rating details · 68,141 ratings · 2,939 reviews

Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a successful Parisian barrister, has come to recognize the deep-seated hypocrisy of his existence. His epigrammatic and, above all, discomforting monologue gradually saps, then undermines, the reader's own complacency.

Get A Copy

Paperback, 147 pages

Published May 7th 1991 by Vintage (first published May 16th 1956)

More Details... Edit Details

Friend Reviews

To see what your friends thought of this book, please sign up.

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Fall, please sign up.

Lists with This Book

Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by J.K. Rowling

Best Books of the 20th Century

7,522 books — 49,154 voters

The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas

Best French Literature

804 books — 1,453 voters

More lists with this book...

Community Reviews

Showing 1-30

Average rating 4.04 ·

Rating details

· 68,141 ratings · 2,939 reviews

More filters

Sort order

Start your review of The Fall

Feb 06, 2008 Lauren Van Buskirk rated it really liked it

I ran into my friend Dan at the club last week, and he was drunk. So we talked Camus. We didn’t discuss Camus’s theories, or the fact that he avoided riding in cars and then DIED IN A CAR CRASH. We just talked about Camus in relation to Dan’s life and in relation to mine. The only really interesting thing about anything to me is how it affects me. That’s the honest truth.

Dan and I agreed that an interest in Existentialism is kind of a stage in your life – like when you liked Pearl Jam or lived ...more

flag 470 likes · Like · see review

Dec 09, 2014 Glenn Russell rated it it was amazing

“One plays at being immortal and after a few weeks one doesn't even know whether or not one can hang on till the next day.”
― Albert Camus, The Fall

“A single sentence will suffice for modern man: he fornicated and read the newspapers.” So pronounces Jean-Baptiste Clamence, narrator of Albert Camus’s short novel during the first evening of a monologue he delivers to a stranger over drinks at a shabby Amsterdam watering hole. Then, during the course of several evenings, the narrator continues his musings uninterrupted; yes, that’s right, completely uninterrupted, since his interlocutor says not a word. At one point Clamence states, “Alcohol and women provided me, I admit, the only solace of which I was worthy.” Clamence, judge-penitent as he calls himself, speaks thusly because he has passed judgment upon himself and his life. His verdict: guilty on all counts.

And my personal reaction to Clamence’s monologue? Let me start with a quote from Carl Jung: “I have frequently seen people become neurotic when they content themselves with inadequate or wrong answers to the questions of life. They seek position, marriage, reputation, outward success of money, and remain unhappy and neurotic even when they have attained what they were seeking. Such people are usually confined within too narrow a spiritual horizon.” Camus gives us a searing portrayal of a modern man who is the embodiment of spiritual poverty – morose, alienated, isolated, empty.

I would think Greco-Roman philosophers like Cicero, Seneca, Epictetus, or Marcus Aurelius would challenge Clamence in his clams to know life: “I never had to learn how to live. In that regard, I already knew everything at birth.”. Likewise, the wisdom masters from the enlightenment tradition –- such as Nagarjuna, Bodhidharma and Milarepa -- would have little patience listening to a monologue delivered by a smellfungus and know-it-all black bile stinker.

I completed my reading of the novel, a slow, careful reading as is deserving of Camus. The Fall is indeed a masterpiece of concision and insight into the plight of modern human experience.

Here is a quote from the Wikipedia review: “Clamence, through his confession, sits in permanent judgment of himself and others, spending his time persuading those around him of their own unconditional guilt.”

Would you be persuaded?

...more

flag 306 likes · Like · see review

Apr 28, 2008 Ahmad Sharabiani rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, fiction, classics, 20th-century, french, literature

La Chute = The Fall, Albert Camus
The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam, The Fall consists of a series of dramatic monologues by the self-proclaimed "judge-penitent" Jean-Baptiste Clamence, as he reflects upon his life to a stranger. In what amounts to a confession, Clamence tells of his success as a wealthy Parisian defense lawyer who was highly respected by his colleagues; his cris La Chute = The Fall, Albert Camus
The Fall (French: La Chute) is a philosophical novel by Albert Camus. First published in 1956, it is his last complete work of fiction. Set in Amsterdam, The Fall consists of a series of dramatic monologues by the self-proclaimed "judge-penitent" Jean-Baptiste Clamence, as he reflects upon his life to a stranger. In what amounts to a confession, Clamence tells of his success as a wealthy Parisian defense lawyer who was highly respected by his colleagues; his crisis, and his ultimate "fall" from grace, was meant to invoke, in secular terms, The Fall of Man in the Garden of Eden. The Fall explores themes of innocence, imprisonment, non-existence, and truth. In a eulogy to Albert Camus, existentialist philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre described the novel as "perhaps the most beautiful and the least understood" of Camus' books.
تاریخ نخستین خوانش: یکی از روزها در سال 1975 میلادی
عنوان: سقوط؛ نوشته آلبر کامو؛ مترجم: ا. بهروز؛ تهران، قائم مقام، مطبوعاتی خرد، چاپ نخست 1340؛ در 120 ص
عنوان: سقوط؛ نوشته آلبر کامو؛ مترجم: علی صدوقی؛ تهران، قائم مقام، چاپ دوم 1345؛ در 107 ص
عنوان: سقوط؛ نوشته آلبر کامو؛ مترجم: شورانگیز فرخ؛ تهران، امیرکبیر، فرانکلین، چاپ دوم 1352؛ در 189 ص؛ تهران، نیلوفر ؛ چاپ چهارم 1377، در 167 ص؛ چاپ نهم 1393؛
عنوان: سقوط؛ نوشته آلبر کامو؛ مترجم: امیر لاهوتی؛ تهران، جامی، 1388؛ در 144 ص؛ شابک: 9789642575572؛
عنوان: سقوط؛ نوشته آلبر کامو؛ مترجم: آناهیتا تدین؛ تهران، روزگار، 1392؛ در 120 ص؛ شابک: 9789643741808؛
ادبیات فرانسه کتاب نخستین بار در سال 1956 منتشر شد
رمانی ست فلسفی، که از زبان «ژان باتیست کلمانس (یحیای تعمید دهنده ی ندا کننده)» که وکیل بوده، و اینک خود را «قاضی توبه‌ کار» می‌خواند، به صورت مونولوگ اول شخص روایت می‌شود. او داستان زندگی‌ خویش را برای غریبه‌ ای اعتراف می‌کند. «ژان پل سارتر» فیلسوف اگزیستانسیالیست، این رمان را «زیباترین و فهم‌ ناشده‌ ترین» کتاب «کامو» می‌خواند. ا. شربیانی ...more

flag 184 likes · Like · see review

Oct 07, 2014 Riku Sayuj rated it it was amazing

Shelves: existentialism, insti-crit, direct-phil, spiritual, sartre, philosophy, brain-bheja-fry, lit, translated, favorites

The Anti-Christ

Why does the Judge-penitent address you directly, as if he has found a kindred soul in you?

In this world responsibility is infinite and that is why The Fall is inevitable - even for a Christ. But back then Christ made a mistake — he saw (was) the nausea of the world, he saw (was) the complete guilt of each man (and his own) and he decided to redeem man (himself) by setting a supreme example. He sacrificed himself because he found himself guilty. It was only an example, a call to a ...more

flag 177 likes · Like · see review

Nov 08, 2015 mark monday rated it really liked it

Shelves: world-of-insects, mind-the-gap

you know this person, we all know this person, this particular kind of person. a real do-gooder, a person of the people, doling out the goodwill and the spare change and the spare arm to help that blind person across the street. you know the satisfaction they get from looking humble, acting humble, being anything but humble at the heart of them. reveling in their goodness; reveling in their superiority. selflessness disguising selfishness. this person loves 'em and leaves 'em too, except "love" you know this person, we all know this person, this particular kind of person. a real do-gooder, a person of the people, doling out the goodwill and the spare change and the spare arm to help that blind person across the street. you know the satisfaction they get from looking humble, acting humble, being anything but humble at the heart of them. reveling in their goodness; reveling in their superiority. selflessness disguising selfishness. this person loves 'em and leaves 'em too, except "love" is too strong, too emotional a word to describe the shallow physical connection that leaves out any potential for a genuine connection. this person looks at other people like they would look at a collection of amusing bugs. this person sees a person needing help but if it costs them something, anything, even just a bit of delay on their way to something super important, then they are going to pass that person by. this person doesn't actually like people all that much; this person despises them, more than a little.

you know this person because you have been this person! for at least a moment or a minute, maybe even longer, maybe it was something you had to get past. you know this person because this person is a part of you, unless you are some fairytale wonderland cartoon character who isn't capable of such things, of even thinking such things, and if that's the case - then fuck off! no, scratch that, don't fuck off; if you've never been this person, not even for a second, then message me because I wanna marry you. I've never been with a perfect person before.

you know this author, mark, or at least you thought you did. Camus! the very name brings up so many thoughts and ideas and college memories, so many references. it's an intimidating name because Camus is an intimidating author. at least I thought he was. but not the Camus who wrote this excoriating and brilliant little novella. The Fall is pure enjoyment. Camus gets into the head of his douchebag protagonist and makes you really understand him. and even better, he makes the experience so much more than a chilly intellectual exercise. Camus is funny. he's more than clever, he has a genuine although dark sense of humor - wounding but never callow wit. but more important than either the depth of his characterization or his darkly sparkling wit is the fact that Camus is a man with reservoirs of empathy. The Fall isn't just a hit job on some hypocritical asshole. Camus understands his character, intimately; he understands him by recognizing that his character is a trait within human nature. the deepest wounds come from the people who are armed with empathy - they know exactly where and how to hurt you. Camus holds up a mirror for his readers to gaze upon themselves. personally, I wasn't too big a fan of what I saw; I don't like that side of me. I hate confronting my own hypocrisies. but I sure did love the mirror itself! it was beautifully built, a real work of art.

8 of 16 in Sixteen Short Novels. ...more

flag 164 likes · Like · see review

Sep 19, 2016 Manny rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommended to Manny by: notgettingenough

Shelves: life-is-camus, parody-homage, french, linguistics-and-philosophy, the-goodreads-experience

I used to be, as they say, a person of some consequence, but now I spend most of my time on Goodreads. What? Oh, I worked for an American organization which provided experts for hire. At significantly elevated rates, it goes without saying. Reliable expertise carries a high market value, that was our business model. Let me tell you about one job I performed. A Spanish government agency wished to discontinue funding of a software project, why I don't know. Some internal feud, perhaps. They requir I used to be, as they say, a person of some consequence, but now I spend most of my time on Goodreads. What? Oh, I worked for an American organization which provided experts for hire. At significantly elevated rates, it goes without saying. Reliable expertise carries a high market value, that was our business model. Let me tell you about one job I performed. A Spanish government agency wished to discontinue funding of a software project, why I don't know. Some internal feud, perhaps. They required an unimpeachable opinion to quote, so I had been brought in as an external evaluator. I was politely told in advance that my evaluation was expected to be negative. My contact assured me that he would keep the meeting as short as possible, in the interests of everyone concerned.

I went in and shook hands with the representative of the project. I could see he had been up all night trying to improve his system's performance. I allowed him to show me the app for a few minutes. The contact man looked at me. In a neutral tone, and, in English, I explained that the project was not using the currently fashionable architecture or evaluation methodology; it was hard not to feel that this raised serious doubts. The contact man translated. "But he doesn't even know Spanish," the victim said helplessly; the contact man replied; a minute later, we were shaking hands again and leaving. The next day, my boss told me the client had been pleased with my performance.

After I discovered Goodreads, I began to feel that software projects were insufficiently challenging. Instead of giving bland opinions on code, I could use my own words to judge the accumulated output of the world's writers, from Homer to the present day. The response was also more interesting. A curt and eloquent dismissal of Joyce or Dostoyevsky would produce satisfying howls of protest from the soi-disant intellectuals, and a comment thread that could yield a whole morning of amusement. But after a while, this too palled. I found that there are only a limited number of ways to disturb a highbrow reader's sense of literary appropriateness; I began to move my reading steadily downmarket, to vulgar and poorly executed novels which readers actually seemed to care about.

Soon I had touched bottom and found the rich stratum of authors with accounts on the site. People claim, without much conviction, that they care deeply about To the Lighthouse; they may believe in all honesty that they care about Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. But there is no doubt at all that they care about their own books. It was extraordinary easy to manipulate these authors' vanity, first raising up their hopes with an appreciative comment and then hitting them with a bluntly insulting one-star review. If they dared object - I was surprised to see how many did - it was then the work of an hour to assemble dozens or even hundreds of other reviewers, who would mock and scorn them as "badly behaved authors", adding their own insulting reviews. I know, one can hardly call my career a glorious one; but no doubt you have similar crimes on your conscience.

Every author, I learned, longs to find the ideal reader who will read them as they know they should be read, who will understand all the things they wished to say but could not express. They search for the ideal reader, but all they find are critics. I think there has only been one ideal reader, two thousand years ago. He looked past the surface of the book and saw the true book inside, the book so deeply hidden that even the author could not see it. Naturally the critics found him intolerable and put him to death. Later, people felt that they had to write a book about the ideal reader. It is a confused and poorly structured book, full of inconsistencies and non-sequiturs. It is still the best book yet written.

I could continue, but it is nearly midnight. I do not think I will tell you any more about my life. Instead, I suggest we walk across the bridge into the Vieille Ville, past the art galleries and antiquarian bookshops. Another one closed down just last week. I want to see them before it is too late. ...more

flag 119 likes · Like · see review

Mar 12, 2012 Gaurav rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: camus, love-to-read-again, favorites, absurdism, philosophical-fiction

The Fall
Albert Camus

I saw only superiority on myself, which explained my benevolence and peace of mind.

You are sitting in a bar in Amsterdam- the Mexico City- just after world war, when you chance an encounter with a ordinary being, a simple man popping up on the stage of your life. Jean-Baptiste Clamence comes across to you an ordinary citizen who tells you he used to be a lawyer but he’s now a judge-penitent. A strange kind of emotion provoked in your consciousness due to the announcement ...more

flag 120 likes · Like · see review

Dec 07, 2012 Samadrita rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nobel-laureates, philosophy-philosophical, novellas-short-novels-short-stories, european-literature, non-fiction-ish, 1001-and-more, re-readable, france, existentialism-absurdism, cherished

Do you want to have the very foundations on the basis of which your whole outlook towards life has been shaped, questioned?
Do you want to see the lines between so-called good and evil, right and wrong, the moral and immoral blurred to the extent you could not distinguish one from the other?
Do you want to erase that cherished and precious point of reference, against which you have compared, weighed all your actions, thoughts and feelings so far?

If the answer to the above 3 questions is yes, then ...more

flag 91 likes · Like · see review

Apr 04, 2016 Steven Godin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: existentialism, france, fiction

The philosophical and psychological study of a man suffering inner turmoil and a crisis of existence, the man in question is one Jean Baptiste Clemance, a Parisian lawyer who while spending time in an Amsterdam bar starts to tell a moving, slightly disturbing story of self-pity and guilt to a complete stranger, only the feeling here was that a mirror was between them and felt more like a confession to himself rather than anyone else. This is Classic Camus and has all the trademarks you would com ...more

flag 86 likes · Like · see review

May 03, 2017 Sarah rated it it was amazing

Shelves: books-i-need-to-reread, 2017-reads, classics, philosophy, favourites, fiction

“People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”

“Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgment of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.”

“Your success and happiness are forgiven you “People hasten to judge in order not to be judged themselves.”

“Freedom is not a reward or a decoration that you toast in champagne. On the contrary, it's hard graft and a long-distance run, all alone, very exhausting. Alone in a dreary room, alone in the dock before the judges, and alone to make up your mind, before yourself and before the judgment of others. At the end of every freedom there is a sentence, which is why freedom is too heavy to bear.”

“Your success and happiness are forgiven you only if you generously consent to share them. But to be happy it is essential not to be too concerned with others. Consequently, there is no escape. Happy and judged, or absolved and wretched.”

“Friendship is less simple. It is long and hard to obtain but when one has it there's no getting rid of it; one simply has to cope with it. Don't think for a minute that your friends will telephone you every evening, as they ought to, in order to find out if this doesn't happen to be the evening when you are deciding to commit suicide, or simply whether you don't need company, whether you are not in the mood to go out. No, don't worry, they'll ring up the evening you are not alone, when life is beautiful. As for suicide, they would be more likely to push you to it, by virtue of what you owe to yourself, according to them. May heaven protect us, cher Monsieur, from being set upon a pedestal by our friends!”

“He had been bored, that's all, bored like most people. Hence he had made himself out of whole cloth a life full of complications and drama. Something must happen - and that explains most human commitments. Something must happen, even loveless slavery, even war or death. Hurray then for funerals!”

“Have you noticed that death alone awakens our feelings? How we love the friends who have just left us? How we admire those of our teachers who have ceased to speak, their mouths filled with earth! Then the expression of admiration springs forth naturally, that admiration they were perhaps expecting from us all their lives. But do you know why we are always more just and more generous toward the dead? The reason is simple. With them there is no obligation. They leave us free and we can take our time, fit the testimonial between a cocktail party and a nice little mistress, in our spare time, in short.” ...more

flag 80 likes · Like · see review

Nov 09, 2014 Luís C. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: philosophy, reading-the-world, french-lit, sartre-and-camus, gallimard, algeria

The Fall by Albert Camus is the monologue of a breathless individual whose phrases follow each other in a frantic rhythm, giving himself up to an attentive interlocutor. The confessions of a man gnawed by the guilt of not having reacted to the suicide of a young woman who has been thrown from a bridge.
This guilt will awaken his human conscience..
Jean Baptiste Clamence, a vain and self-centered bourgeois, a renowned advocate, whom his good calculated actions distinguish, will abandon his rich Par ...more

flag 67 likes · Like · see review

Jul 25, 2017 Samra Yusuf rated it really liked it

Shelves: albert-camus, existentialism-philosophy, translated

So what do we talk about, when we talk about living? The very foundations on the basis of which our whole outlook towards life has been shaped? I’ve heard people claiming to spend their lives with a code of conduct, a sort of philosophy of their own to lead a life.” I love doing this,” “I like being there”, “this is wrong”, “I shouldn’t have said that”, and countless other incongruous statements.
From where comes this venerated point of reference to judge our actions, where lies the line that dis So what do we talk about, when we talk about living? The very foundations on the basis of which our whole outlook towards life has been shaped? I’ve heard people claiming to spend their lives with a code of conduct, a sort of philosophy of their own to lead a life.” I love doing this,” “I like being there”, “this is wrong”, “I shouldn’t have said that”, and countless other incongruous statements.
From where comes this venerated point of reference to judge our actions, where lies the line that discerns good from evil, moral from immoral, right from wrong…..if there is any!
Camus, unlike the other existentialists, never takes religion as hostile, the very title is an obvious reference to the Biblical story of Adam and Eve; our narrator has come as a sinner to us, he has sinned, or so he thinks, and for the consequences, he has fallen from happy fields, into place where there is no light, but darkness visible, he talks and talks to us, confessing sin after sin over the course of several long evenings, why does at this point of his life, has he thought to grant words to those unspeakable actions, or inactions he has done, why indeed he thinks, there lies redemption in confessesions?
Clamence,is the victim of judgment, his innerself prods him to outlook life beyond the self-centered existentiality, he has done deeds of good, but has never savored the feeling of being good, he has helped the penurious, but with no empathy, he has enjoyed being fabled, with a certain aloofness, he has taken pleasure in women, but never loved any!
And now he comes to us, as a sinner, craves to be heard and redeemed, he is exhausted of being a mere spectator in stage of life, he seeks hope in reclamation, but there is no hope in regions of sorrow, doleful shades, where peace and rest can never dwell, hope never comes that comes to all, but torture without end!
In the light of this work of genius and brevity, I am left bewildered and convinced all the same, was Camus tired of those existential refrains, he preached so dearly in his works, because in later, while criticizing this school of philosophy, and addressing Sartre what he said, is of importance gravely!
"far from leading to a decent solution of the problem of freedom versus authority, [existentialism can only lead] to servitude”
A little conclusive, isn’t it??

...more

flag 64 likes · Like · see review

Nov 04, 2013 Muhammad Arqum rated it it was amazing

Shelves: philosophy-stares-into-oblivion, favorites, classical-fiction, mindfreak

How foolish I was to assume this would be a quick little read. I could not have been more wrong. I physically feel exhausted. How did Camus write this? The fall is as dense as they come, bitter, excruciating. Forces you to cogitate. The ideas are so repugnant and yet they keep gnawing inside your head. The words are like evil dark matter that establishes its authority right from the start and stays there dictating, vandalizing your property. I cannot believe I am giving this a 5 star rating. I d ...more

flag 62 likes · Like · see review

Mar 14, 2008 Jake rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Anyone who's confused as to what this life is all about.

As with most Camus, this book is, in the course of a hundred or so pages, an entire decade of therapy. If you don't feel worse—yet oddly optimistic—about yourself and people in general after this book, you're either inhuman, or you're the exact person this book was meant for.

Someone once extolled this book as "an examination of modern conscience," and it was through this lens that I first began this work. That's accurate, I suppose, to a point, but to leave interpretation at that would be to ro ...more

flag 58 likes · Like · see review

Jul 14, 2017 Χαρά Ζ. rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

**The fall**

My dear Camus, i love you.

flag 55 likes · Like · see review

Aug 29, 2012 David Schaafsma rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-20th-century, fiction-in-translation

I was at the St Louis City Museum with the fam, summer of 2017, taking a break, reading this edition of The Fall, and an employee noticed I was reading this, and a fifty-year-old copy I have owned all of my life. "Oh!" she said, "My favorite philosopher! And such an old book! Can I smell it?" I understood her fetish. And her admiration for Camus, which has been a lifelong thing for me.

I had decided to re-read the (sort of) trilogy from Camus this year, including The Stranger, The Plague, and The I was at the St Louis City Museum with the fam, summer of 2017, taking a break, reading this edition of The Fall, and an employee noticed I was reading this, and a fifty-year-old copy I have owned all of my life. "Oh!" she said, "My favorite philosopher! And such an old book! Can I smell it?" I understood her fetish. And her admiration for Camus, which has been a lifelong thing for me.

I had decided to re-read the (sort of) trilogy from Camus this year, including The Stranger, The Plague, and The Fall, though I never really related to the latter when I first read it. I began re-reading it in August, set it aside, and only finished it now, in December! The Stranger is sort of sensational, in a way, the story of an amoral murder, accomplished without guilt; The Plague, which I consider one of the great novels, features Dr. Rieux who commits to saving lives even as the plague advances and things seem hopeless. Another quick way of distinguishing them is that The Stranger is a portrait of an alienated, nihilist man; The Plague is almost the opposite, featuring a passionate commitment to social justice, and The Fall once again shows us that we have largely failed to learn from WWII. All three work together to make a philosophical case for a commitment to help others, for humanism, if you will.

The Fall is a first person account of a Parisian lawyer, Clemance, a self-satisfied hypocrite, making a kind of confession to another man in a bar. The confession pertains to something that happened one night a few years ago when the lawyer was walking by the Seine; he observes a woman flinging herself from the riverbank, a suicide. He hears the cries of the woman but he doesn’t move to help her (cf. The Stranger).

The character of Clemance represents modern man living post WWII, post-Holocaust. The woman’s fall, in short, triggers Clemance’s own moral fall. Camus said that the book represents a kind of confession, though one unaccompanied by a transformation. He said it was “a story of the confused spirit of the times.” It reminded me, in this reading, of Dostoevsky’s also first-person account of political and moral struggle, Notes from the Underground.

Clemance’s story begins with a mention of he Jewish Quarter in Amsterdam. That image is important to the story thematically. If The Plague is an inspiring story of resistance, The Fall is one of a failure to act, of knowing that bad things are happening (such as the Allies knowing of the Holocaust) and doing too little, too late about it. As Clemance says, “I have no friends; I only have accomplices. To make up for this the number has increased; they are the whole human race.” We are all morally culpable for the Holocaust (and subsequent genocides and atrocities).

Clemance, not penitent, is nevertheless haunted by his moral failure:

“Then I realized, calmly, as I resigned myself to an idea the truth of which I have long known, that that cry which had sounded over the Seine behind me years before, has never ceased.”

The Stranger and The Plague have always been great books for me, but I’ll admit, The Fall is chilling, as dark as The Stranger in many ways. (But since I have fifty year old paperback copies, they all have that same musty smell!)

Camus's Three Antidotes to the Absurdity of Life, from Maria Popova!

https://www.brainpickings.org/2017/07... ...more

flag 55 likes · Like · see review

Dec 19, 2011 Ted rated it liked it

Shelves: read-in-20s, have, beach-mixed, existenialism-wide, lit-french, abandoned

Well. Well. Well.

(To copy a review opening by a good friend here on this site.)

But then I thought, why not translate it into French? In honor of Camus?

So I tried that, and what did I get?

Bien. Bien. Bien.

No. Not what I meant at all. I didn't mean Good.

By well I meant to express … resignation? A feeling of … what should I say? ennui?

Mon cher compatriote … may I call you that without offense? But why would I assume that we are fellow citizens, dear or otherwise? And why would this author assume ...more

flag 37 likes · Like · see review

Feb 17, 2012 MJ Nicholls rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: pernod-and-gauloises, penguin-classics, novellas

The follow-up to Christos Tsiolkas’s bestseller The Slap, where a boozy Australian lunatic whomps a friend’s child at a party and creates a hotbed of interpersonal tension over 400 outstandingly boring pages. In The Fall, a different boozy Australian accidentally (or was it intentional?) elbows a child onto the grass, causing him to fall and hurt his pelvis, causing outrage on the streets of Canberra! Are our children ever safe from inebriated philanderers with pointy elbows? Why can’t drunks we ...more

flag 34 likes · Like · see review

Aug 23, 2011 Rakhi Dalal rated it really liked it

Shelves: favorites, albert-camus, powerful-stuff

Left me thinking more than ever.Still there is so much that is left unanswered.The book leaves you uneasy, contemplating and struggling to find the logic underneath the issues raised/addressed by the author.But can there be any sense to the working of human minds?

flag 33 likes · Like · see review

Mar 31, 2017 Håkon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This is a wonderful little novel about the internal conflicts of the modern man. Selfishness masquerading as selflessness. Our admiration of freedom, yet our inclination towards slavery. Our critique of the living, and honoring of the dead. admitting guilt, not for repentance, but to make guilty of others, so as to make oneselves, in turn, less guilty
The fall recounts a man's fall from innocence, to hating all that is mankind, with all it's contradictions, wishing some form of master would float ...more

flag 32 likes · Like · see review

Dec 21, 2011 Richard Derus rated it really liked it

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Report: Told as a long monologue stretched over several days, Jean-Baptiste Clamence reviews the very great highs of his life as a respected criminal attorney, and the very great lows of his life as a libertine without a discernible conscience or moral compass. He narrates his life to an unseen and unheard Other, a tourist from France in Clamence's adopted home of Amsterdam who runs into Clamence at a seedy bar. At each major turning point in Clamence's life, the narra Rating: 4* of five

The Book Report: Told as a long monologue stretched over several days, Jean-Baptiste Clamence reviews the very great highs of his life as a respected criminal attorney, and the very great lows of his life as a libertine without a discernible conscience or moral compass. He narrates his life to an unseen and unheard Other, a tourist from France in Clamence's adopted home of Amsterdam who runs into Clamence at a seedy bar. At each major turning point in Clamence's life, the narrative adds another level of self-serving horribleness, and the reader recognizes the commonality of all people with each other in Clamence's descent...fall...from the peaks of public acclaim and well-wishing into the pits of a personal hell, made up of the deeds done and undone that bend us into new internal shapes with our regrets.

My Review: I read La Peste when I was seventeen, and I ***HATED*** it. I was angry at the waste of so much as a single tree to print it, in any and all languages and countries around the world. I despised each and every syllable. I vowed never, ever, ever to read another word by Camus. From that cold winter's night in 1976 to the point I was forced by the Book Circle to pick this book up, I kept to that promise.

Well. I sit corrected. La Chute is a fascinating moral tale told by a story-teller of great power and flawless control of his material and his language. (I am reliably informed that the original French is superb; this translation is sterling.) I am so glad that I didn't make the mistake of letting my teenaged judgment stand unchallenged. I would have missed out on a life high point in reading. I am accused, with Clamence, of leading a life grounded in the illusions of one's own superiority, one's own infallible rightness. HA! Wisdom comes, when it does, at a high price...the life of an innocent, the decision to be silent, the power of life and death over a virtual stranger are all things that happen to many, even most, of us; they're not always instantly obvious, of course, so we let them slide away unmarked. But how do *you* know that your call to complain about the service you received didn't result in someone losing a last-chance job, spiraling into depression, and ending her life? You don't. Clamence does. (That didn't happen in the book, by the bye.)

This book did what only the very best books written by the very best writers can do: It reoriented my internal compass. Permanently. Read it! Soon! ...more

flag 30 likes · Like · see review

Jun 16, 2018 Supreeth rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: existentialism-nihilism, classics, fiction, philosophy-psychology, 2018, french

You're at this bar in Amsterdam, sipping gin or whatever, this guy, wearing a suit, allegedly a lawyer, comes up to you and confesses everything about his life, You know he's weird at first, then you know he's a manipulative bastard, then you know he's a low-key sociopath, then you know he questions his own existence , then you know he's alone and depressed, then you know he's guilt ridden, then you know... anyway, you should've stood up and left, but you didn't. You sat there for two days, list ...more

flag 28 likes · Like · see review

Jan 12, 2016 Dhanaraj Rajan rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: literature, french-lit, nobel-prize

The Opening Line:

Camus in an interview given in 1945: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."

My Reactions after/while reading the novel:

1. Camus must be an existentialist and that too an advocate of negative existentialism, that which holds there is no meaning for human existence. In the search for meaning, man is distressed and he dies without any comfort of having received a proper answer. In fact, death liberates him from his struggles. D The Opening Line:

Camus in an interview given in 1945: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."

My Reactions after/while reading the novel:

1. Camus must be an existentialist and that too an advocate of negative existentialism, that which holds there is no meaning for human existence. In the search for meaning, man is distressed and he dies without any comfort of having received a proper answer. In fact, death liberates him from his struggles. Death is the saviour. (I warn you that these philosophical understandings are purely subjective and marred by my personal prejudices associated with them).

2. Camus must have been the fan of Jean Paul Sartre, the advocate of negative existentialism. The thoughts expressed in this novel regarding the themes - freedom and judgment - convinced me of it. Sartre held that man is condemned to be free. Out of his freedom when he acts he is held responsible. Thus, it is a joke to say that man is free. For freedom binds man. Camus echoes these thoughts in this novel and in the other novel (The Stranger) that I had read. In this novel, Camus advises that it is better to be a slave of a master than a free man. (Seems to be speaking for Nietzsche's Master and Slave morality!) For as a slave, it is easy to obey and be without any repentance for the actions. Otherwise, the free man acts and becomes the object of judgment for others. Everyone judges the other. No one is exempted. Your neighbour, the one who is sitting close to you, is the first one.

What is the duty of a man then? To avoid the judgments. But that is hardly possible. So what is the other option? If you are equal among the equals it is better to be more equal than the other. (Orwell must be smiling!) The way proposed is to confess/accept your failings and misdeeds. Camus also says that no one is innocent, not even Jesus Christ! So, it is better to confess first and then you elevate your position to your advantage. Now, you can judge for you have earned it. He writes: "I grow taller, I breathe freely, I am on the mountain, the plain stretches before my eyes. How intoxicating to feel like God the Father and to hand out definitive testimonials of bad character and habits."

Everything else (love, women, work, family, religion) might give temporary relief to escape from the boredom of life. But they are not permanent. Life is basically to dodge the judgment or to be in a better position to judge others. Man, to be completely liberated, has to be judge-penitent. And that is the way the main character defines himself from the beginning. By the way the main character's name is Jean Baptiste Clamence. I found that name rhyming easily with Jean Paul Sartre. Moreover, the name is synonym of the combined professions of Judge (john, the Baptist) and Penitent (Clemency). Camus was very intelligent to put together so many things in so nut shell a form (107 pages).

By the way, I have just pointed out few of my impressions relating to some philosophers and philosophical schools. There are other interesting and provocative thoughts as well relating to family, love, women, religion, God, ego, etc. Go for it..... ...more

flag 27 likes · Like · see review

Feb 27, 2014 Jonathan Terrington rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 1001-books-challenge-2014, classic-literature, faith, classics-challenge-3, university, 1001-books-to-read-before-you-die, philosophy

“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”

The Fall is one of those books which is less of a novel than an exploration of some kind of spiritual or philosophical narrative or truth. The narrator is a self appointed judge who spares no details about the fact that he does in fact love himself in a highly narcissistic manner. It is this manner which lends him to feeling free as to judge humanity, while ironically also judging himself and yet seemingly feeling free fro
“Sometimes, carrying on, just carrying on, is the superhuman achievement.”

The Fall is one of those books which is less of a novel than an exploration of some kind of spiritual or philosophical narrative or truth. The narrator is a self appointed judge who spares no details about the fact that he does in fact love himself in a highly narcissistic manner. It is this manner which lends him to feeling free as to judge humanity, while ironically also judging himself and yet seemingly feeling free from the burden of being judged. For he is a man who has fallen into a state that means he seems to no longer care about the depravity of depravity and that is in essence what The Fall as a novel discusses.

Of course, the finer details of the novel are seen in the little quotes contained within the narrative itself. Which is an interesting aspect of this novel as it stands. The narrative is in its way almost a fourth-wall-breaking stream of consciousness as it seems like the narrator is spilling out all his thoughts in a turbulent stream. It is only the fact that he interjects with directions to the reader that enable you to see that in fact, this is a stream of writing directed at the individual in a kind of accusation. 'You lead me into this depravity', the judge penitent seems to accuse the reader directly, 'You led me into the fall, for all humanity is fallen.' Oh yes, it perhaps is important to mention that uniquely, The Fall is written in the Second Person - an aspect of writing rarely used for any kind of fiction.

It has further been noted to me that the concept of 'the fall' comes from a particular bridge scene which I had skimmed over as somewhat less important. It is a scene hidden in all the rambling as the main character moves from being likeable to completely arrogant and back again. This scene is one in which a woman jumps from a bridge into a river and our 'judge penitent' does not rescue her from the water. This is despite many claims by our narrator about how heroic he could be - therefore showing his contradictory nature. Further this highlights what we all can be: contradictions who say one thing but do another - hypocrites.

As a work of entertaining fiction I would not recommend Albert Camus' work here. It's fragmented and messy, not at all easy to read. Yet as a work of philosophical and spiritual discussion I highly recommend it. Camus has the profound ability to get to the reader and cause them to question their realities and ask how they have fallen into a state of mistruth and misdirection wherever it may be possible. ...more

flag 25 likes · Like · see review

Sep 25, 2016 Jon Nakapalau rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites, classics

The 'cocoon of conventionality' we spin is comforting...but when it is ripped away there is not always a 'butterfly with ethical wings' that emerges. Camus reminds us that our character is both projection and interjection - in and of - the society we live in.

flag 25 likes · Like · see review

Nov 29, 2008 Evan rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: _less-than-200-pages, philosophy, __in-my-collection, 2011-reads

"Mon chéri, it seems Amsterdam has disagreed with you. You're so pale."

"Ah, mon amour, oui, I never want to leave the Paris sun again. I want to hold you naked and hang my fog-drenched clothes over the terrace to dry and never look at another dismal canal or smoky bar."

"But I thought my man liked those things about Amsterdam."

"I did, sweet, until I had the misfortune of running into this rather shabby, verbose character...French expat, Jean-Baptiste...well, at least that's what he called himself "Mon chéri, it seems Amsterdam has disagreed with you. You're so pale."

"Ah, mon amour, oui, I never want to leave the Paris sun again. I want to hold you naked and hang my fog-drenched clothes over the terrace to dry and never look at another dismal canal or smoky bar."

"But I thought my man liked those things about Amsterdam."

"I did, sweet, until I had the misfortune of running into this rather shabby, verbose character...French expat, Jean-Baptiste...well, at least that's what he called himself, Jean-Baptiste. Who the hell knows? He struck me as an unreliable narrator. Called himself a "judge-penitent" a lot. Never really explained very well what he meant by it. I think he meant he was a judge who was judging himself, but then made a lot of fuss about judgment being hypocritical and whatnot. Told me all about his libertine adventures, and war stories about being named the pope in a prison camp, and bragged about how he flattered people while laughing behind their backs. A really obnoxious, stuck-up fellow. Kept letting on that he had some kind of profound wisdom but ended up talking in circles and contradicting himself a lot. And I never could get rid of him. He'd show up every day for five days wherever I was, in a bar or on a ferry, and off he'd go again, and he was absolutely impossible to shake. I mean, imagine being accosted for a week by Raskolnikov from Dostoevsky's Crime and Punishment and being subjected to his compulsive confessions hour after hour. Needless to say, I got nothing done on my business trip in Amsterdam."

"Goodness, honey, sounds awful!"

"It was, it really was. The guy would say things he thought were terribly profound, but when you really took apart what he said, it often was nothing more than just an obvious banality. Take this, for instance...oh yes, I took some shorthand notes when he was nursing his beer and staring off into space...usually into that empty picture frame over the bar, the frame that held a painting by Van Eyck he claimed to have stolen... Anyway, take this for example. He would say something like:
'Be it said, moreover, that as soon as I had re-won that affection I became aware of its weight. In my moments of irritation I told myself that the ideal solution would have been the death of the person I was interested in. Her death would, on the one hand, have definitively fixed our relationship and, on the other, removed its compulsion. But one cannot long for the death of everyone or, in the extreme, depopulate the planet in order to enjoy a freedom that cannot be imagined otherwise.'

"So, if you pare that down and remove all the fancy language, he said little more than: 'You can't kill people just to be free of them.' Well, no duh!

"But then, he would turn around and say something fairly profound and not beat around the bush about it, such as: 'No man is a hypocrite in his pleasures.'

"Mr. Self-important Diarrhea Mouth probably won't be able to stop himself from writing a novel about his adventures, and proceed to ruin it by spewing off a bunch of confessional thoughts that he barely takes the time to explore before throwing in 10 more tangents, then throw in a little Amsterdam atmosphere to give it some bare semblance of scene-setting. Knowing the literary critics and academics, they'll probably go apeshit with praise and fall over each other trying to come up with the usual litany of biblical allusions--which seems to be de rigueur for people seeking tenure...Ah but I digress like he did. Alas, he seems to be rubbing off...an unfortunate aftermath. Anyway, I'm well rid of him... Fortunately!"
...more

flag 24 likes · Like · see review

Apr 17, 2013 Leo Robertson rated it it was amazing

Shelves: owned

Awesome, powerful, almost scarily compressed, seductive, peppered with ironic humour, unreadable then readable then re-readable. Camus’ Jean-Baptiste strips away the artifice and illusions of civilization having undeniably fallen out of it and hence witnessed the pointlessness of it, striving with the rest of his time to wrench others out too. An easy task, as once the reader is made aware of the absurd, it becomes an obsession, and he or she too would do anything in their power not to return to ...more

flag 23 likes · Like · see review

Sep 11, 2017 Alejandro Saint-Barthélemy rated it it was amazing

Shelves: des-esseintes, philosophy, purges-of-the-heart, power-corruption-and-lies, always-re-reading, feather-flock-masterpieces, top-21, france

I re-read this book twice a year every year, in different languages (French, English or Spanish :)

Every chapter (~10 pages) can easily take me two hours (I think only die-hard fans of poetry [or Hegel] can understand this) due to the amount of paradoxes, insights and quality of the prose (o the French surely have a way with being poetic even writing prose [Baudelaire was really on point, as usual in that decadent genius]), not to mention the self-examination and judging others... :)

I love this b ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

May 14, 2018 muthuvel rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction, philosophy, favorite

"All dunces, all punished, let’s all spit on one another and – hurry! to the little-ease! Each tries to spit first, that’s all. I’ll tell you a big secret, mon cher. Don’t wait for the Last Judgment. It takes place every day."

This is a profoundly enlightening philosophical work. As Sartre said, this is the most beautiful and least understood work of Camus. I don't think it would be fair to elaborate the happenings of this monologue novel.

"We must all answer for everything to the world at large ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

Mar 01, 2017 Bahar Mir rated it it was amazing

Shelves: to-re-read, favorites

Have you ever read a book so amazing that you have thought about changing your past ratings because you hadn't done justice to this one if they shared the same score?That's how I felt during reading this amazing masterpiece.
As you can see I've marked to re-read this book , so I would do a more thorough review on it once I have done so ; but for now ,this would be it.
In the description of the book , you will read that it's about a painting which was stolen. Well it isn't just about that. It's an ...more

flag 18 likes · Like · see review

« previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 … next »

new topic
Discuss This Book

topics	posts	views	last activity
Was he talking to himself?	31	370	May 06, 2020 05:12AM
Goodreads Librari...: Wrong Publication Date	2	13	Oct 12, 2015 07:06AM
♥ Nothing Better ...: BR-->28, Mansu **(MIA) ~Sachin ~ Vaibhav... ++The Fall++	272	119	Nov 29, 2014 05:28AM
The Bookworms of RVA: "The Fall" Albert Camus	1	55	Oct 27, 2011 05:09AM

Readers also enjoyed

See similar books…

Genres

Fiction

1,554 users

Philosophy

1,145 users

Classics

905 users

Cultural > France

484 users

Literature

340 users

See top shelves…

About Albert Camus

Albert Camus

20,673 followers

Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a representative of non-metropolitan French literature. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy (only chance prevented him from pursuing a university care Albert Camus (1913-1960) was a representative of non-metropolitan French literature. His origin in Algeria and his experiences there in the thirties were dominating influences in his thought and work. Of semi-proletarian parents, early attached to intellectual circles of strongly revolutionary tendencies, with a deep interest in philosophy (only chance prevented him from pursuing a university career in that field), he came to France at the age of twenty-five. The man and the times met: Camus joined the resistance movement during the occupation and after the liberation was a columnist for the newspaper Combat. But his journalistic activities had been chiefly a response to the demands of the time; in 1947 Camus retired from political journalism and, besides writing his fiction and essays, was very active in the theatre as producer and playwright (e.g., Caligula, 1944). He also adapted plays by Calderon, Lope de Vega, Dino Buzzati, and Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun. His love for the theatre may be traced back to his membership in L'Equipe, an Algerian theatre group, whose "collective creation" Révolte dans les Asturies (1934) was banned for political reasons.

The essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), 1942, expounds Camus's notion of the absurd and of its acceptance 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. Dr. 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 Camus's words: "We refuse to despair of mankind. Without having the unreasonable ambition to save men, we still want to serve them". Other well-known works of Camus are La Chute (The Fall), 1956, and L'Exil et le royaume (Exile and the Kingdom), 1957. His austere search for moral order found its aesthetic correlative in the classicism of his art. He was a stylist of great purity and intense concentration and rationality. ...more