Are we in for a Camus revival? The indications are that we may be. Only three years after the appearance of Herbert R. Lott-man’s massive Albert Camus: A Biography, we find ourselves presented with yet another biography, this one entitled simply Camus, by a British specialist in French literature named Patrick McCarthy who now teaches in the United States.[1] Conor Cruise O’Brien, the influence of whose own critical monograph on Camus[2] (published in 1970) is evident everywhere in McCarthy’s book, has repaid the compliment by praising it as “the best comprehensive study of Camus in English.” Yet while claiming to deal with “Camus’s life, work, and times,” McCarthy is so stingy with biographical detail and so niggardly in his account of the historical and cultural context in which Camus’s life and work took shape that no one depending on him alone would be able to make much sense of the story. For that Lottman is a far better source. Like many biographers nowadays, he tells us more than we perhaps need or want to know, but this is on the whole preferable to not being told enough. On the other hand, Lottman neither is nor pretends to be a literary critic, whereas McCarthy is nothing if not critical. His real purpose, in fact, is to determine “what remains of Camus” as a writer. Here then is his judgment: