Albert Camus.
 
Paris: Gallimard, 1948. Cream paper wraps with a period glassine cover, pages uncut. Some pencil marks and a inch long line of residue, likely left by previous dealers, on the flyleaf, minor edge-wear, else pristine. 233 pages. An advance copy (hors commerce) inscribed by Camus to his friend and fellow novelist Marcel Arland on the title page. Near fine.
 
"The State of Siege," or perhaps better translated as "State of Emergency," is a political allegory about resistance to the plague of authoritarian rule. Panned by French critics, who were expecting a stage adaptation of his novel The Plague, it was nonetheless cherished by Camus himself, who considered it one of his major works. Arland was a prize winning (the Prix Goncourt in 1929) novelist better know for his work as an editor of literary reviews, founding Dés and the Dadaist periodical Aventure in the early 1920's before joining La Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), where he stayed until 1977. An exceptional signed Camus association copy in uncommonly fine condition.
 
"Few plays have benefited from such a unanimous panning, which is all the more regrettable because I still believe that L'État de siège for all its faults may be the work I have written that resembles me most."