Albert Camus: How Tuberculosis, Anxiety, and a Failed Marriage Shaped 'The Fall'

Key facts

• Albert Camus was diagnosed with tuberculosis in December 1930 at age seventeen after severe coughing fits left him spitting blood.
• With no antibiotics available in the 1930s, Camus underwent artificial pneumothorax, deliberately collapsing the infected lung to allow it to heal.
• In 1935, Camus's second lung became infected, and strenuous activity became too much for him, a serious blow for a man who prized physical fitness.
• In 1936, Camus submitted his diploma thesis on Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism, but the French government rejected TB sufferers on medical grounds, thwarting his teaching career.
• In July 1936, Camus and his first wife Simone Hié embarked on a kayaking trip with his friend Yves Bourgeois; Camus felt uneasy in Prague and called the trip an "aura of fear."
• During the trip, Camus accidentally opened a letter addressed to Simone and discovered she was illicitly obtaining drugs from her doctor and sleeping with him; he ended the marriage.
• The furor following the 1951 publication of The Rebel almost broke Camus; his confidence shattered, he experienced terrible writer's block, and his lungs deteriorated to the point he could no longer breathe properly.
• Out of this turmoil came The Fall (1956), whose narrator Jean-Baptiste Clamence, a Parisian lawyer, gives a masterclass on moral narcissism and how it has infected modern politics.
• After his marriage to Simone Hié broke down, Camus married Francine Faure but kept a string of mistresses; in 1953, while hospitalized due to her nerves, Francine attempted suicide by jumping from a window and survived.