Adam Gopnik over Albert Camus: “In America, Camus is, first of all, French; in France he remains, most of all, Algerian — a Franco-Algerian, what was later called a pied noir, a black foot, meaning the European colonial class who had gone to Algeria and made a home there. [..] His father, a poorly paid cellarman for a wine company, was killed in battle during the First World War, when Camus was one. His mother was a maid, who cleaned houses for the wealthy French families. Though he was, as a young man, sympathetic to Algerian nationalism, he understood in his marrow that the story of colonialist exploitation had to include the image of his mother on her knees, scrubbing. Not every colonial was a grasping parasite.” In ‘Facing history; Why we love Camus’, in The New Yorker, April 9, 2012.
