A few days ago, I went to a book fair.

There were around a hundred publishers and bookstores. About eighty of them seemed to be promoting Camus.

We wandered through piles of Camus books. One publisher had even installed a life-sized cardboard cutout of Albert Camus to advertise a new edition of A Happy Death.

The stand was not very stable.

While I was browsing, Camus fell on my head.

Twice.

The editor looked embarrassed. Eventually, they gave up and laid Camus flat on the floor.

I looked down at him and thought: What are you trying to tell me, Camus? I’m not buying it.

Then it occurred to me: has Camus simply been dead long enough for copyright to expire?

Over the past few years, it has felt like a golden age for Camus in the publishing industry. Everyone is publishing Camus. Everyone is reading Camus. One publishing house even launched an entire “Camus Reading Month.”

Apparently, understanding absurdism has become a cultural obligation.

Some literary influencers have started complaining too. One of them joked that publishers have turned Camus into a mass-market self-help celebrity.

The first Camus book I ever read was The Stranger.

I didn’t understand it at all.

I remember asking my father, “Is this guy okay? Why does he act like that?”

My father, who studied French literature in Paris, didn’t explain absurdism to me. He didn’t explain The Stranger either.

Instead, he told me something much more useful:

“Look at the world the book was written in.”

Literature is a form of contemporary history.

To understand a writer, you need to understand the society that shaped them, the events they lived through, and the questions they were trying to answer.

That’s why biographies mention where people grew up, what their parents did, and what kind of lives they had. Those details aren’t gossip. They’re keys to understanding the work.

Unfortunately, most of us skip them.

In today’s publishing market, Camus has largely been reduced to a simple image:

a handsome, slightly melancholic intellectual.

To be fair, I don’t blame publishers.

I used to work as an editor.

You can write the most thoughtful recommendation in the world, but if readers don’t immediately understand it, they’ll put the book back on the shelf. And if the book doesn’t sell, someone from marketing will eventually show up and ask a very practical question:

“Can we publish something people actually buy?”

At the book fair, I didn’t see cynical people exploiting literature.

I saw editors who genuinely loved books.

At one stand, I picked up a book called The Trees That Have Lived for Centuries. The editor’s face lit up—not because I was about to spend money, but because I had chosen a book they genuinely cared about.

That’s why I love book fairs.

Do all these editors deeply understand Camus?

Probably not.

Do they all spend their evenings debating absurdism?

Probably not.

But Camus sells.

And in that sense, he feels familiar.

Most of us live under the same pressures: sales targets, performance metrics, business models.

Even Kafka ends up smiling confidently on modern book covers.

The most photogenic pictures of these writers are always the ones that survive.

And honestly, if someone picks up a book simply because the author looks good, that’s not the worst thing in the world.

Readers are allowed to be shallow.

A book bought for the wrong reason can still become the right book.

People who changed the world through ideas eventually become a face on a poster.

People whose philosophy emerged from the crises of their age eventually become an aesthetic.

We reduce everything to three-minute explanations and believe we have understood it.

Then we return to the endless stream of information demanding our attention.

Reading Camus has not become easier.

Buying Camus has.

And if a handsome face helps someone open a difficult book for the first time, perhaps that’s not such a bad thing after all.