French president Nicolas Sarkozy wants celebrated author Albert Camus to be reburied in the Panthéon" to mark the 50th anniversary of the French writer's death.

Jean Camus, the son of the late author is completely opposed to Sarkozy’s plan. He suspects Sarkozy of trying to exploit the legacy of his father. He told Le Monde newspaper that, “It would be an aberration.” The author’s son points out that politically his father utterly disagreed with everything Sarkozy and his party stands for.

However, Jean’s twin, Catherine Camus, is undecided. On the one hand, she considers that it “would be a symbol to people for whom life is very hard”. But on the other, she points out that her father was a man who detested honours, telling France Inter radio: “That is why it is not a simple question.”

Albert Camus, a Nobel Prize winner in 1957, was not a man for decoration. “When Camus received the Nobel Prize, he said it was too much for him”, remembers Alain-Gérard Slama, columnist for La Figaro and producer of France Culture radio. “It doesn’t fit in with Camus’s work, and even less to his life”, Olivier Todd, a Camus biographer, told FRANCE 24.

By FRANCE 24