Hello you're very welcome to Longreads, a Jacobin podcast where we look in depth of political topics and thinkers.

My name is Daniel Finn. I'm the features editor here at Jacobin and I'll be presenting the show.

The French writer Albert Campean here at Jacobin and I'll be presenting the show.

The French writer Albert Camu is one of the most celebrated novelists of the last century.

He's also a political reference point for figures like the current French president, Emmanuel Macron,

Camu who died in a car crash at the age of 44

as something of a rock star image.

His most famous novel, The Stranger, even inspired a song by the cure. I'm alive a day.

I'm a stranger.

Is it in an arrow. Our guest today for a discussion of Kamu's legacy is Oliver Glowag.

Oliver teaches French and francophone studies at the University of North Carolina,

and he's the author of a recently published book, Albert Camu, a very short introduction.

How would you describe the position of Albert Camus in French cultural life today?

It's hard to understate. Camus is omnipresent in French cultural life

from just a local bookstore.

There'll be probably a table full of books on Camus,

or correspondence by Camus, because there's so many. Camus is also there in the in the

theaters. I think there was an opera recently of course at the movies as well. And a friend told me that in Paris right now someone

is reading Kemu's diaries in a sort of one-man show.

Camu also of course is probably the most quoted French novelist philosopher by politicians

and he's quoted by everyone from the Anicus Federation to the far right, including very much the current

president in Manuel Macron.

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