1913-1960

"A novel is never anything, but a philosophy put into images. "

Birthplace

Mondovi, Algeria

Education

Algiers University (philosophy)

Other jobs

Supported himself through college working in a car firm and shipping company; political journalist; active in French Resistance.

Did you know?

Goalkeeper for his university team in Algeria, Camus found the missing link between football and existentialism ("All I know most surely about morality and obligations, I owe to football").

Critical verdict

Combining literary clarity with admirable political and philosophical commitment, Camus received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957 "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".

Recommended works

The Outsider is a compelling, dreamlike fable; The Myth of Sisyphus a brave attempt to reconcile man with himself.

Influences

He produced stage adaptations of Faulkner's Requiem for a Nun (1956) and Dostoevsky's The Possessed (1959).

Now read on

The Plague is part of the great tradition of apocalypse novels: try JG Ballard's The Drowned World or Mary Shelley's The Last Man for similar studies of isolation become absolute. Herman Hesse's Siddharta achieves a location of meaning in meaninglessness comparable to The Myth of Sisyphus.

Adaptations

The Plague was patchily adapted in 1992, starring William Hurt; a play, Caligula, was filmed in Hungary in 1996.

Recommended biography

The recent Albert Camus: A Life by Olivier Todd is readable and exhaustive.

Useful links and work online

Work online
· Essay: The Absurd Man
· Excerpt: Between Yes and No
· 1944 Combat editorial: 'The Blood of Freedom'

Background
· Albert Camus on the Nobel Prize site

• This article was amended on 29 January 2010. The original said that Camus was "goalkeeper for Algeria". This has been corrected.