French novelist, essayist and playwright, who received the 1957 Nobel Prize for literature. Camus was closely linked to fellow existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre in the 1940s, but he broke with him over Sartre's support to Stalinist politics. Camus died in a car accident near Sens, Fr., on January 4, 1960.

Albert Camus was born in Mondovi, Algeria into a working-class family. His mother was an illiterate charwoman and father an itinerant agricultural labourer, who was killed in WW I. In 1923 Camus won a scholarship to the lycée in Algiers, where he studied from 1924 to 1932. Incipient tuberculosis put an end to his athletic activities, and the disease was to trouble Camus for the rest of his life. Between the years 1935 and 1939 Camus held various jobs in Algiers, and he also joined the Communist Party.

In 1936 Camus received his diplôme d'étudies supérieures from the University of Algiers in philosophy, and to recover his healt he made his first visit to Europe. Camus's first book. L'ENVERS ET L'ENDROIT, a collection of essays, appeared in 1937.

By this time Camus's reputation in Algeria as a leading writer was growing. He was also active in theater. In 1938 Camus moved to France, and divorced next year his first wife, Simone Hié, who was a morphine addict. From 1938 to 1940 Camus worked for the Alger-Républicain and in 1940 for Paris-Soir. He married Francine Faure in 1940 and taught in Oran, Algeria in 1942.

During WW II Camus was member of the French resistance. He was reader and editor of Espoir series at Gallimard publisher from 1943 and founded with Sartre the left-wing newspaper Combat, serving as its editor. His second novel, L'ÉTRANGER, which he had begun in Algeria before the war, appeared in 1942. Its central character Mersault commits an murder without explicit reason and motivation. Indifferent to bourgeois morality Mersault is condemned to die as much for his refusal to accept the standards of social behavior as for the crime itself. In the same year appeared Camus's philosphical essay LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE. It starts with the famous statement: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding wheather or not life is worth living is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy. All other questions follow from that." Camus compares the absurdity of the existence of humanity to the labours of the mythical character Sisyphus, who was condemned through all eternity to push a boulder to the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled down again. Camus takes the nonexistence of God granted and finds meaning in the struggle itself.

In 1947 Camus resigned from Combat and published in the same year his third novel, LA PESTE, an allegory of the Nazi occupation of France. After his break with Sartre Camus wrote L'HOMME RÉVOLTÉ, which appeared in 1951 and which explores the theories and forms of humanity's revolt against authority. From 1955 to 1956 Camus worked as a journalist for L'Express. Among his major works in the late-1950s are LA CHUTE (1956), an ironic novel in which the penitent judge Jean-Baptiste Clamence confesses his own moral crimes.

SEE ALSO: André Gide

For further reading: Albert Camus: Une Vie by O.Todd (1996); Albert Camus by P.H. Rhein (1989); Camus: A Critical Study of His Life and Work by P. McCarthy (1982); Albert Camus, 1913-1969: A Biographical Study by P. Thody (1961)

Selected bibliography:

• L'Envers at l'endroit, 1937 - Betwixt and Between
• Noces, 1939
• L'Étranger, 1942 - The Stranger film 1967, dir. by Luchino Visconti
• Le Mythe de Sisyphe, 1942 - The Myth of Sisyphos
• Caligula, 1945
• La Peste, 1947 - The Plague - Rutto
• L'Homme révolté, 1951 - The Rebel
• La Chute, 1956 - The Fall
• L'éxil et le royaume, 1957 - Exile and the Kingdom
• Essais, 1965
• Lyrical and Critical Essays, 1968
• Summer, 1968
• Selected Essays and Notebooks, 1970
• La Mort heureuse, 1970 - A Happy Death
• Youthful Writings of Albert Camus, 1976
• Oeuvres complètes, 1983 (9. vols.)
• American Journals, 1987
• Le Premier Homme, 1994 - The First Man (incomplete)

Compiled by Kuusankoski Public Library, Finland (© 1997) and René Märtin (© 1998-2001).