Intriguing friendship

Julius Purcell (“Stranger than fiction”, 2 November) refers to Albert Camus lecturing at the Dominican monastery of Latour-Maubourg in 1948. In December 1946, the American-French writer Julien Green, a Catholic, recorded in his journal having heard Camus talk at “the Latour-Maubourg convent” on what was expected of Catholics in post-war France. Camus described himself as a pre-conversion Augustine, struggling with the problem of evil. Green found his talk moving and was struck by his integrity; but he was less impressed by a recent convert who claimed to be, unlike Camus, in a state of grace.

The two writers held each other in high regard. La Chute (“The Fall”) evidently owes a good deal to Green’s novel Epaves (“The Strange River”), and Camus wrote to congratulate Green on his play Sud (“South”). This relationship between the existentialist and the Catholic is one which might repay further research.

Philip Conford, Collingham, Nottinghamshire