Albert Camus et Alger

The aim of this article is to examine the portray of Algiers in Albert Camus's «The First Man» (1994). This autobiographical novel points out the fact that towns are not simply made by spaces and buildings, but mainly by the citizens living within their boundaries. Camus's Narrator gives his characters the task to connote places, even the amorphous ones. Throughout the process by which people attribute meaning to places, the novel re-writes the space. In the meantime, each town, each urban space produces specific stories; processes and relationships suggest and determine plots and stories. Camus's Algiers is the ground where his main character Jacques has experiences, grows up, meets people. Algiers is also the place where Jacques can rebuild his genealogy by means of some clues apt for activating the familial and individual memory.