The Fall

The Fall (French: La Chute) is a 1956 novel by French author and philosopher Albert Camus, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature the following year. It is the last novel Camus published before his death in 1960. Camus’s work deals with absurdism, the philosophical stance that life has no higher meaning. The Fall is told in first-person perspective by the protagonist Jean-Baptiste Clamence as he tells his life story over a series of five days to an anonymous stranger. The Fall tackles themes of finding value in an absurd and meaningless world, the nature of innocence and guilt, and alienation in the wake of World War II. The Fall is a secular retelling of the Biblical Fall of Man that pays particular attention to the heavy cost of the atrocities of World War II.

This guide uses an eBook version of the 1956 Vintage Books edition, translated by Justin O’Brien. This guide refers to each of the book’s six different sections as chapters.

Content Warning: The Fall contains mentions of suicide, abuse, and alcoholism as well as discussions of slavery and genocide.

Plot Summary

The Fall begins in a bar named Mexico City in an impoverished part of Amsterdam.