Albert Camus (1913-1960) is a French-Algerian writer and philosopher. As a thinker and an artist, Camus's works explored the essence of existence and the meaning of life. He was the recipient of the 1957 Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of 44, the second-youngest recipient in history.
Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi, French Algeria. He was a member of the Pied Noir, a social group of people descended from poor French immigrants who arrived in Algeria in the late 19th century. Camus's father, a soldier in the French army, died in World War I, leaving his mother to raise the children. Camus' mother was deaf and worked as a cleaner, struggling to raise the family in a cramped three-room apartment. At school, Camus proved himself a strong student; with the help of a teacher, he gained a scholarship to an esteemed high school in 1923. During high school, he developed an interest in boxing and was the goalie for the school soccer team. After contracting tuberculosis in 1930, Camus was forced to give up all strenuous physical activity and instead focused on his studies.
In 1933, Camus enrolled at the University of Algiers and completed his education in 1936; after presenting his thesis on Plotinus. Camus joined the French Communist Party (PCF) in early 1935. He saw it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria," even though he was not a Marxist. An essay collection, The Wrong Side and the Right Side, was published in 1937. In 1938, Camus began working for the leftist newspaper Alger républicain (founded by Pascal Pia) as he had strong anti-fascist feelings, and the rise of fascist regimes in Europe was worrying him. By then, Camus had developed strong feelings against authoritative colonialism as he witnessed the harsh treatment of the Arabs and Berbers by French authorities. Alger républicain was banned in 1940 and Camus flew to Paris to take a new job at Paris-Soir as editor-in-chief. In Paris, he almost completed his "first cycle" of works dealing with the absurd and the meaningless-the novel L'Étranger (The Outsider (UK), or The Stranger (US)), the philosophical essay Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus) and the play Caligula. Each cycle consisted of a novel, an essay and a theatrical play.
Soon after Camus moved to Paris, the outbreak of World War II began to affect France. Camus volunteered to join the army but was not accepted because he once had tuberculosis. As the Germans were marching towards Paris, Camus fled. He was laid off from Paris-Soir and ended up in Lyon, where he married pianist and mathematician Francine Faure on 3 December 1940. Camus and Faure moved back to Algeria where he taught in primary schools. Because of his tuberculosis, he moved to the French Alps on medical advice. There he began writing his second cycle of works, this time dealing with revolt-a novel La Peste (The Plague) and a play Le Malentendu (The Misunderstanding). By 1943 he was known because of his earlier work. He returned to Paris where he met and became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre. He also became part of a circle of intellectuals including Simone de Beauvoir, André Breton, and others.
After the War, Camus gave lectures at various universities in the United States and Latin America during two separate trips. He also visited Algeria once more, only to leave disappointed by the continued oppressive colonial policies, which he had warned about many times. During this period he completed the second cycle of his work, with the essay L'Homme révolté (The Rebel). Camus was critical of communism and the western intellectuals who embraced it, which led to a falling out with Sartre. Throughout the 1950s, Camus found himself distanced from other French writers and philosophers. Tired of the narrow-minded Paris intellectual scene, Camus angered thinkers on both the French left and right with his views on the Algerian independence movement. In 1957, Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. With the prize money, Camus moved to a quiet town in the French countryside and continued to work on writings that dealt with themes of love and creation.
Camus died at the age of 46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. After celebrating New Year's Eve with friends at his house in Lourmarin, Vaucluse, Camus was destined to travel home by train with his family. At the last moment, his publisher’s nephew Michel Gallimard offered to drive him by car. The car crashed and Camus, who was in the passenger seat, died instantly. 144 pages of a handwritten manuscript entitled Le premier Homme (The First Man) were found in the wreckage.Camus was buried in the Lourmarin Cemetery, Vaucluse, France, where he had lived.
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