Camus moves through Sade, Hegel, Marx, Nietzsche, the Russian revolutionaries, surrealism to ask how rebellion curdles into tyranny when it forgets its limits.

The book sits at the hinge between existentialism and political ethics. It is less lyrical than The Myth of Sisyphus, more historical, occasionally severe. Camus insists that revolt must remain tethered to human dignity and that once it becomes absolute, it justifies murder in the name of abstraction.

This Penguin Classics edition keeps it accessible as a reading copy rather than a collector’s object. For readers interested in political philosophy, post-war European thought, and the moral question of how one resists without becoming what one opposes.