A happy death

192 pages

English language

Published 1995 by Vintage International.

View on OpenLibrary

(4 reviews)

A young man searches throughout life for the key to confronting death without fear.

23 editions

reviewed A Happy Death by Albert Camus (Penguin classics)

The Price of Happiness – My Reflection on Albert Camus’s A Happy Death

Reading A Happy Death felt like stepping into the intimate laboratory of Camus’s thought — raw, searching, and strangely serene. Written before The Stranger but published posthumously, it carries the early pulse of his philosophy: the tension between the body’s hunger for life and the mind’s craving for meaning. From the first pages, I sensed a quiet intensity, as if Camus were dissecting existence itself through the slow awakening of his protagonist, Patrice Mersault.

What fascinated me most was Mersault’s journey from restlessness to solitude. He begins amid the ordinary emptiness of work and routine, longing for escape. When he commits a murder — an act both shocking and curiously detached — it becomes less a crime than a pivot toward liberation. I found myself disturbed by how calmly Camus presents it, yet I understood: for Mersault, happiness must be wrestled from life, not granted by it.

The later chapters, …

reviewed A Happy Death by Albert Camus (Penguin classics)

Morir bien, vivir mejor: Mi lectura de La muerte feliz de Albert Camus

La muerte feliz, obra póstuma de Albert Camus publicada en 1971, me ha parecido una especie de ensayo disfrazado de novela. Se percibe como un primer borrador de las obsesiones filosóficas que Camus desarrollará más tarde en El extranjero y El mito de Sísifo.

El protagonista, Patrice Mersault (nombre que ya anticipa al famoso Meursault), es un hombre que se debate entre la rutina de su trabajo, la búsqueda de la felicidad y la conciencia de la muerte. Tras asesinar a un inválido rico que le promete liberación, Mersault emprende una serie de viajes por Europa y Argelia, intentando reconciliarse con su cuerpo, el tiempo y la naturaleza.

Lo que más me ha impactado de esta lectura es cómo Camus explora la felicidad no como una meta abstracta, sino como una experiencia tangible ligada al placer, al silencio, al sol y a la soledad elegida. La muerte no es …

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