Despite a total blackout by media outlets both large and small, today’s publication of Enemy of the Disaster—the first authorized English translation of Renaud Camus’ political writings—merits a great deal of attention. A work like this is long overdue, as it will surely help give audiences a fuller—and certainly more balanced—understanding of why Camus is so important.
Enemy of the Disaster—released this past Sunday in the U.S., and today [October 17] in Europe and the rest of the world—brings together a wide range of writings by Camus spanning the years 2007-2017, all carefully selected by the book’s editor and co-translator, Louis Betty, an associate professor of French at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. In stark contrast to the way Camus has been mis-portrayed by others, readers will encounter in this volume a man of refinement and high culture—and a heroic “committed opponent of conspiratorial thinking of all kinds,” according to the publisher, Vauban Books.
The author of more than 150 books, Camus is known for his works of fiction, philosophy, travel writing, art criticism—and an extensive diary which he has kept for over 40 years. A native of Chamalières in the Auvergne region of central France, his book Tricks—prefaced by Camus’ mentor, Roland Barthes, one of 20th century France’s greatest literary critics—was the first and only work of his to be translated into English (in 1979), until now.
With 10 chapters—each thoroughly annotated to help readers navigate references—Enemy of the Disaster provides a representative selection of Camus’ extensive political writings. In the process, it dispels the malicious misinterpretations and polemical misrepresentations to which Camus has been subjected by progressive critics and the mainstream media.
The book includes Camus’ 2010 speech, “The Great Replacement,” which has become notorious, being the source of the expression with which Camus is most often identified. Despite what critics have said, the ‘Great Replacement’ is—as Éric Zemmour, the president of the French political party Reconquête, has said—”neither a fantasy nor a conspiracy; it is the historical drama of our time.”
Still, to reduce Camus to this idea alone, says the book’s publisher, does a major injustice to his extensive and eloquent works. “This volume aims to change that.”
The works in this volume were selected and translated by Betty—the author of Without God: Michel Houellebecq and Materialist Horror published by Penn State University Press in 2016, as well as numerous scholarly articles—in collaboration with Ethan Rundell, a professional translator and journalist, and alumnus of University of California at Berkeley and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) in Paris.
Betty, who has worked on Camus’ writings for many years, provides a helpful critical introduction in this volume.
Enemy of the Disaster will be an important resource to all students of contemporary France—and a reminder of the need for Europeans to think long and hard about immigration and national identity, the role of education, and the future of humanity. As R.R. Reno, editor of First Things magazine, notes in his blurb to the book, Camus is “[a] Cassandra for the decadent West … a truth-teller … His prose cascades forward with a silk-lined urgency that would make Tom Wolfe jealous.”
We have published a series of pieces to explore the ideas of Renaud Camus. The first was Anthony Daniel’s commentary published here, the second was by Pierre-Marie Sève here. Filip de Winter discusses Camus’ ideas in an interview here. We previously also published Rod Dreher’s birthday tribute to Camus here. We hope these various articles will reinvigorate discussion over immigration and its challenges today.
We hope to help raise awareness of his works, nearly all written in French, in the lead-up to the worldwide premier of the publication of the first English-language collection of essays by Camus, Enemy of the Disaster, released on October 15th in the United States and on October 17th in Europe and the rest of the world. Enemy of the Disaster can be ordered from Amazon or from the publisher’s distributor, Itasca Books.
