Albert Camus

**Albert Camus** (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French philosopher and writer. Camus wrote novels and plays. Camus was born in Algeria, a country in North Africa. He had French parents. Camus was an existentialist philosopher. Existentialism is a philosophy that is very different from other ways of thinking. Camus won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957.

He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award. He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.

### Early years

Albert Camus was born in Algeria to a poor working-class family.  His mother was Spanish and his father was French. His father died in battle and he was left to live with his grandmother. When he was 17 he was diagnosed with tuberculosis, which was very impactful on him at that point in his life. It limited him greatly in his athletics as well as in his career opportunities, due to the fact that tuberculosis is quite contagious. For this reason he claimed that his disease “set him free” because he would have done something else with his life had he seen the opportunity.  He went to the University of Algiers, where he graduated with a degree in 1935. In the 1930s, Camus became interested in politics. In 1935, Camus joined the French Communist Party, a political group. In the late 1930s, Camus was a writer for the socialist newspaper, the _Alger-Republicain_.

### 1940s

In 1941, Camus wrote his first novel, which was called _The Stranger_. During World War II, Camus joined the French Resistance to fight against the Nazi army. After World War II, Camus became friends with another writer named Jean-Paul Sartre. Camus and Sartre often talked about philosophy and politics in _cafés_ (or shops that serve food, but the menu is smaller than in a restaurant)

### 1950s

Camus wrote books about philosophy (ways of thinking) which said that life was "absurd" (makes no sense, or has no meaning). In the 1950s Camus tried to improve human rights. In 1960, Camus died in a car crash. He had two children, Catherine and Jean.

## Some of his novels (stories)

- The Stranger (_l'étranger_) (sometimes called _The Outsider_) (1942)
- The Plague (_la peste_) (1947)
- The Fall (_la chute_) (1956)

## Some of his books about philosophy

- _Betwixt and Between_ (1937)
- _The Myth of Sisyphus_ (1942)
- _The Rebel _ (1951)

## Plays

- _Caligula_ (1938)
- _The Misunderstanding_ (1944)
- _State of Siege_ (1948)
- _The Just Assassins _ (1949)
- _The Possessed_ (1959)

## Correspondence

- _Albert Camus, Maria Casarès. Correspondance inédite (1944-1959)_. Édition de Béatrice Vaillant. Avant-propos de Catherine Camus. Collection Blanche, Gallimard. Parution : 09-11-2017.

## Books about Camus

- _Camus_ (1959) by the writer Germaine Brée
- _Albert Camus, A Study of His Work_ (1957) by the writer Usamah Siddiqui
- Heiner Wittmann: _Sartre and Camus in Aesthetics. The Challenge of Freedom._ Hrsg. v. Dirk Hoeges. Dialoghi/Dialogues. Literatur und Kultur Italiens und Frankreichs, Band 13, Peter Lang, Frankfurt 2009

## Related pages

- Existentialism

## Other websites

- Nobel Prize in Literature (1957)
- Fonds Albert Camus - Cité du livre d'Aix en Provence
- Société des Études Camusiennes
- The Albert Camus Society

## Infobox (philosopher)

- **image**: Albert Camus, gagnant de prix Nobel, portrait en buste, posé au bureau, faisant face à gauche, cigarette de tabagisme.jpg
- **caption**: Portrait from _New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection_, 1957
- **region**: Western philosophy
- **era**: 20th century philosophy
- **birth place**: Dréan, El Taref, French Algeria
- **death place**: Villeblevin, Yonne, Burgundy, France
- **school tradition**: Absurdism
- **main interests**: Ethics, Human nature, humanity, justice, love, politics
- **influences**: Plotinus, Augustine of Hippo, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone Weil, Victor Hugo, Pascal Pia, George Orwell, André Gide, Max Stirner, Sigmund Freud, Lev Shestov, Jean-Paul Sartre
- **influenced**: Thomas Merton, Jacques Monod, Jean-Paul Sartre, Orhan Pamuk, Mohsin Hamid, Richard Wright (author), Richard Wright, Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster, Huey P. Newton