Albert Camus

Albert Camus (7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French thinker and writer—a philosopher, novelist, playwright, journalist, and political activist. He also identified as a world federalist. In 1957, at age 44, he won the Nobel Prize in Literature, making him the second-youngest person ever to receive that honour. He was also the first literature laureate born in Africa. His best-known works include *The Stranger*, *The Plague*, *The Myth of Sisyphus*, *The Fall*, and *The Rebel*. Camus was born in French Algeria to pied-noir parents—Europeans of French descent born in North Africa. He grew up in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. When Germany invaded France in 1940, Camus was living in Paris. He attempted to escape but eventually joined the French Resistance, becoming editor-in-chief of the underground newspaper *Combat*. After the war, he became a public celebrity, travelling widely to give lectures. He was married twice and had numerous extramarital relationships. Politically, Camus belonged to the left but opposed Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union, which he saw as totalitarian. He leaned toward anarcho-syndicalism and was a moralist. He joined several organisations that promoted European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), Camus took a neutral position, arguing for a multicultural, pluralistic Algeria—a stance that found little support from any major party. Philosophically, Camus is a key figure in the development of absurdism. Although many critics see his work as existentialist, Camus himself rejected that label throughout his life. **Early years and education**

Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in a working-class district of Mondovi (now Dréan), in French Algeria. His mother, Catherine Hélène Camus, was of French and Balearic Spanish descent; she was deaf and illiterate. His father, Lucien Camus, a poor French farm labourer, was killed in October 1914 while serving with a Zouave regiment in World War I—Camus never knew him. After his father’s death, Camus, his mother, and other relatives lived in the Belcourt area of Algiers with very few material possessions. As a second-generation French inhabitant of Algeria (a French territory from 1830 to 1962), he was called a *pied-noir*. His paternal grandfather had moved to Algeria in the early 1800s seeking a better life. This poor background and his identity as a *pied-noir* deeply shaped his later life and beliefs. Still, as a French citizen, Camus enjoyed more rights than the Arab and Berber Algerians under colonial rule. As a child, he loved football and swimming. In 1924, thanks to his teacher Louis Germain, Camus won a scholarship to attend a prestigious lyceum near Algiers. Germain had noticed his sharp intelligence and eagerness to learn, and gave him free lessons to prepare for the scholarship competition—even though Camus’s grandmother had planned for him to become a manual worker to help support the family. Camus remained deeply grateful to Germain for the rest of his life. Upon learning he had won the Nobel Prize, he wrote to Germain: “But when I heard the news, my first thought, after my mother, was of you. Without you, without the affectionate hand you extended to the small poor child that I was, without your teaching and example, none of all this would have happened.” Germain replied warmly in a letter dated 30 April 1959, addressing him as “my little Camus.”

From 1928 to 1930, Camus played goalkeeper for the junior team of Racing Universitaire d’Alger. He loved the sense of team spirit, fraternity, and shared purpose. Match reports often praised his passion and courage. But his football ambitions ended when he contracted tuberculosis. Later, Camus drew parallels between football and human existence, morality, and personal identity. He believed the simple morality of football stood in contrast to the complicated morality imposed by institutions like the state and church. At 17, in 1930, Camus was diagnosed with tuberculosis. Because the disease is contagious, he moved out of his home and stayed with his uncle Gustave Acault, a butcher, who influenced him. Around this time, Camus turned to philosophy, guided by his teacher Jean Grenier. He was impressed by ancient Greek philosophers and Friedrich Nietzsche. He could only study part-time, so he took odd jobs—private tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at the Meteorological Institute—to earn money. In 1933, Camus enrolled at the University of Algiers, earning his *licence de philosophie* (BA) in 1936 after writing a thesis on Plotinus. He developed an interest in early Christian philosophers, but Nietzsche and Arthur Schopenhauer led him toward pessimism and atheism. He also studied novelist-philosophers such as Stendhal, Herman Melville, Fyodor Dostoyevsky, and Franz Kafka. That same year, he met Simone Hié, then the partner of a friend, who later became his first wife. **Formative years**

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,” though he was not a Marxist. He said, “We might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities.” He left the PCF a year later.