Biography : Albert Camus. Author of The Fall and The Plague

Biography of Albert Camus:

French novelist, essayist, play writer and journalist. Albert Camus, who had not known his father, was born in Algeria where he spent his childhood with his mother. His health (he was tubercular) kept him from reaching a university career. After a bachelor's degree in philosophy, he became a committed journalist (Communist Party and Algiers-Republican) and then was resistant during the Occupation. Of his short adhesion to the Communist Party, he got out a mistrust of indoctrination and the certainty that the political strategy should never take precedence over morals. In 1943, he met Jean-Paul Sartre and worked for the newspaper "Combat".

Albert Camus worked out an existentialist philosophy of absurdity, resulting from the report of the absence of God and of a sense to life. For him, the awakening of this nonsense must be regarded as a victory of the clearness that allows to better assuming existence by living in reality and conquering one’s freedom. Man can overstep this nonsense by the revolt against his condition and against injustice.

Albert Camus turned his talent of writer to good account to diffuse his philosophical ideas by adapting form to meaning. He used symbolic novels and theater plays like means of expression for his ideas and his doubts. The author of "The Fall" expressed a skeptical and lucid humanism in which he considers that man has above all to be just. Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize of Literature in 1957 and died in a car accident in 1960.

Albert Camus

Biography of Albert Camus:

Quotes of Albert Camus