The Myth of Sisyphus
by Albert Camus
There is no meaning. Keep going anyway. Camus shows you how.
For you if
you want to understand how to keep going when the outcomes are not guaranteed and the universe has not confirmed that any of it matters
⚡ Choose Your Route ⚡
Not sold directly on this site. Support indie bookstores with a new copy, or go sustainable with a used one.
Buy New on Bookshop.orgSupports independent bookstores
— OR —
Find Used on Better World BooksSecondhand & sustainable
$16 MSRP
Reference price shown. Other editions may be available.
Camus opens with the only serious philosophical question: why not suicide? He is not being provocative. He means it — if life has no inherent meaning and the universe offers no answers to our need for them, what justifies continuing? His answer is the absurd: not a problem to be solved but a condition to be lived with full awareness and without flinching. The refusal to resolve the absurd through religion, ideology, or death is the act — the insistence on remaining lucid inside a situation that offers no guaranteed outcomes. Written during the Nazi occupation of France, which gives the question and the answer their full weight. The image at the center of the book — Sisyphus pushing the boulder up the mountain knowing it will roll back, finding in the act of pushing itself a reason sufficient to the task — is the most useful single image in the P&P catalog for understanding why resistance matters even when outcomes are uncertain. We must imagine Sisyphus happy. Not because the boulder stays up. Because the pushing is enough.
Where This Book Lives
Related Viewing
Shares a topic, theme, or setting with this book in the catalog.
This Is Spinal Tap(1984)
dir. Rob Reiner
The mockumentary that invented the entire genre.
A fictional British heavy metal band's disastrous American reunion tour, shot as a straight-faced documentary by a fawning filmmaker.
Why it’s here: Improvised, deadpan, and so precisely observed about ego and mediocrity in rock bands that musicians still quote it as documentary rather than comedy. Joy as craft — the whole point of Laugh & Resist without needing an argument attached.
What We Do in the Shadows(2014)
dir. Jemaine Clement & Taika Waititi
Immortal vampires, undone by chore wheels and rent.
Vampire housemates in modern-day Wellington navigate roommate squabbles, nightclub bouncers, and the occasional werewolf feud.
Why it’s here: Finds the joke in the most mundane possible version of an ancient horror premise — vampires who can't figure out laundry or nightclub bouncers. Pure craft-comedy, and a reminder that laughing at something doesn't require it to matter politically first.
Same event, different angle
The same history — told by someone who saw it differently.
Same pattern, different era
Different time, different place. The same thing keeps happening.
A Young People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn
Zinn, but sized for rebellion.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
I Am Malala
Malala Yousafzai
Bravery looks like a schoolgirl with a book.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
A Black Women’s History of the United States
Daina Ramey Berry & Kali Nicole Gross
America seen through eyes that built it.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
A People’s History of the United States
Howard Zinn
The underdogs get the mic.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
For the family bookshelf
Same idea, written for a younger reader. Good for reading together.
Sister Outsider
Audre Lorde
Poetry with teeth and a megaphone.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Freedom Dreams
Robin D. G. Kelley
Radical hope as resistance strategy.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Change Sings
Amanda Gorman
Kids, courage, and the sound of change.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST
Greta and the Giants
Zoë Tucker
A tiny voice takes on giants.
✦ READ – REFLECT → RESIST