Albert Camus Biography and List of Works

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

"Mother died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know. I had a telegram from the home: 'Mother passed away. Funeral tomorrow. Yours sincerely.' That doesn't mean anything. It may have happened yesterday."
(from The Stranger)

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 the Battle of the Marne. Camus mother' shocked by the news of her husband's death, suffered a stroke that permanently impaired her speech. 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 health he made his first visit to Europe. Camus' 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 theatre. 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 a member of the French resistance. He was a 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 (The Stranger), 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' philosophical essay LE MYTHE DE SISYPHE. It starts with the famous statement: "There is only one really serious philosophical question, and that is suicide. Deciding whether 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 for all eternity to push a boulder to the top of a hill and watch helplessly as it rolled down again. Camus takes the non-existence of God for granted and finds meaning in the struggle itself.

"A novel is never anything but a philosophy put into images," Camus wrote. He admired Sartre's gift's as a novelist, but did not find his two sides, philosophy and storytelling, both equally convincing. In an essay written in 1952 he praises Melville's Billy Budd. Melville, according to Camus, "never cut himself off from flesh or nature, which are barely perceptive in Kafka's work." Camus also admired William Faulkner and made a dramatic adaptation of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun.

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. At the time of his death, Camus was planning to direct a theatre company of his own and to write a major novel about growing up in Algeria.

"The absurd man will not commit suicide; he wants to live, without relinquishing any of his certainty, without a future, without hope, without illusions, and without resignation either. He stares at death with passionate attention and this fascination liberates him. He experiences the "divine irresponsibility" of the condemned man."
(from Sartre analysis of Mersault, the protagonist of The Stranger, in Literary and Philosophical Essays, 1943)

"It is not rebellion itself which is noble but the demands it makes upon us."
(from The Plague, 1947)

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); The Theatre of Albert Camus by E. Freeman (1971); The Sea and the Prison by R. Quillot (1970); Albert Camus: The Artist in the Arena by E. Parker (1965); Albert Camus, 1913-1969: A Biographical Study by P. Thody (1961) - SEE ALSO: André Gide.

L'Envers at l'endroit, (1937)
Noces, (1939)
L'Étranger, (1942)
Le Mythe de Sisyphe, (1942)
Caligula, (1945)
La Peste, (1947)
L'Homme révolté, (1951)
La Chute, (1956)
L'éxil et le royaume, (1957)
Essais, (1965)
Lyrical and Critical Essays, (1968)
Summer, (1968)
Selected Essays and Notebooks, (1970)
La Mort heureuse, (1970)
Youthful Writings of Albert Camus, (1976)
Oeuvres complètes, (1983)
American Journals, (1987)
Le Premier Homme, (1994)