Book Review: A Happy Death

Title: A Happy Death
Author : Albert Camus (Translated to English By Robert Howard)
ISBN: 0141186585
ISBN-13: 9780141186580, 978-0141186580
Binding: Paperback
Publishing Date: 28-Feb-2002
Publisher: Penguin Uk
Number of Pages: 144
Language: English

Rating:

Today I take a book called “A Happy Death” by Albert Camus. It is the title that attracted me when I picked the book. I was wondering how a person can die happy as if he was happy he would like to live and not die. Another thing that attracted me was it’s size. In our fast paced life, we always prefer shorter novels. The book has been divided into two parts “Natural Death” and “Conscious Death”. In its first part, the protagonist Merseault kills his crippled friend Zagreus in order to obtain his wealth and use it to transform his otherwise mundane life. I found it very fast paced and with some strong dialogues. In the second part, Merseault travels and experiments with different ways of life to obtain happiness. Later on when he achieves that he becomes sick and finally dying a happy death. The second part is not that fast paced compared to the first part, but it has been written beautifully and the reader can find lyrical descriptions of Algiers and his life there. It keeps the reader hooked to the book and it is one of the books you can read over and over. The book definitely needs to be known better.

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