José María Ridao

The posthumous publication of The First Man in 1994 brought about a profound shift in the reception of Albert Camus's work, despite his reader support never wavering. In this book, José María Ridao investigates the deep and less-analyzed reasons for that transformation, but also—and above all—those aspects of Camus's literary and philosophical work where, beyond today's praise and admiration, self-serving clichés and erroneous interpretations still persist, which once served to dismiss him as an uneducated thinker and an author of 'pretty stories.' To this end, Ridao reveals the well-established philosophical tradition within which Camus's moral stances during the major crossroads of the 20th century gain true meaning, as well as the biographical factors and the rhetoric he employs to express himself—rhetoric far more tied to the problems of philosophical expression than to mere stylistic choices, as his detractors claimed.

With The Eloquent Void, Ridao warns against the sterile hagiography of Camus which, having rescued him from the limbo to which Sartre and the existentialists attempted to confine him, is now hindering the distinction between intellectual interest in a work and emotional devotion toward a man."

“...a precise and passionate book, intelligent and strangely intimate.” Albert Camus y el malentendido, Letras Libres, 24/02/2017

'Albert Camus, la mirada contemplativa', José Andrés Rojo, El País, 07/03/2017