The protagonist of the book, Jacques Cormery, travels to his hometown, Algiers. A flood of memories forces him to confront his past. He recalls the poverty, the orphanhood, his football-obsessed peers, and the inspiring teacher who instilled in him a love for reading and books. Now a mature man living in France, he wonders to which side of the Mediterranean he belongs. "In the end, I will speak for those I loved," writes Albert Camus in a note for "The First Man." His quintessentially autobiographical novel was retrieved unfinished from the wreckage of the car where he prematurely lost his life. Through these pages, his personality and sensitivity emerge, the roots of his thought and the beginnings of his ideological commitment. Because, throughout his life, he wanted to speak on behalf of those who were denied a voice. He once said that writers "nourish the hope of rediscovering the secrets of a universal art which, with humility and skill, would finally bring life back to heroes with flesh and endurance." "The First Man" is the last Camus, always moving, always captivating.