A review by emilymknight
The Myth of Sisyphus by Albert Camus

challenging reflective slow-paced

4.0

I never go for philosophy and essays but for some reason this book took my fancy, and I thought it would be a good first encounter with Albert Camus, so I could better understand his obsession with the absurd.

I find it hard to rate this book because I am definitely not the intended audience and I am sure I definitely missed a lot of the points he was making. So, I really just took it at surface level, tried to understand his ideas on the absurd. I think it's one of those books that I might revisit in years to come, once I have gotten used to the philosophy genre a bit more, because as I said, it's not usually the kind of thing I go for, but we have to start somewhere.

Though short, I did enjoy the last part The Myth of Sisyphus, as well as the first part An Absurd Reasoning, the third part Absurd Creation was somewhat enjoyable, but for me, I didn't really enjoy second part The Absurd Man at all.

Overall, there were a few quotes that did stick out to me.

"The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world."

"It was previously a question of finding out whether or not life had to have meaning to be lived. It now becomes clear on the contrary that it will be lived all the better if it has no meaning."

"To the extent to which he imagined a purpose to his life, he adapted himself to the demands of a purpose to be achieved and became the slave of his liberty."

And of course...

"One must imagine Sisyphus happy."