Here’s a nice dose of absurdist spy drama for your Tuesday afternoon: Corriere della Sera, an Italian daily, traced back some academic remarks to an overlooked diary entry from Czech poet Jan Zábrana, who claimed that Camus’s 1960 car accident was in fact staged by Soviet spies. The reason? Camus publicly denounced a Soviet foreign minister this one time, and also angered Moscow by supporting Boris Pasternak after he was banned by Stalin. (So: Your typical big-shot writer behavior.) Zábrana says the KGB punctured the tire of the car carrying Camus; a Camus biographer refutes the claim, saying nothing in the Moscow historical record supports the suggestion. Still, Vulture hopes it’s true, only because the interrogation scenes in the inevitable Camus movie would be priceless. “When did you receive this information about Soviet activities?” “Today, or maybe yesterday; I can’t be sure.” Etc. [Guardian UK]
