The Myth of Sisyphus
Just finished reading a collection of Albert Camus's essays, including The Myth of Sisyphus. Exceedingly well written, where each sentence and phrase is so dense with meaning that any simplification is certain to lose something. I suspect that the translation from the French may not have aged so well, because the prose feels a little stilted in sections.
The Myth of Sisyphus is Camus's reactions to the concept of suicide. In short he reasons that life is absurd, and that knowledge of this absurdity forces a man to question whether there is any point in living. Camus responds by saying that in the face of the absurdity, one must both accept this and revolt against it. It finishes with the myth of Sisyphus, who is consigned to eternally moving a large stone up a hill, only to have it tumble back to the bottom. Camus imagines that Sisyphus has resigned himself to his fate, and is actually rather happy.
The other essays are similarly interesting but deal with more digestable topics, and in particular his geographical descriptions of Algiers and Oran include much clever imagery.