Albert Camus

Albert Camus was a French writer and thinker, born on 7 November 1913 in Dréan, in French Algeria. He grew up in modest circumstances in Algiers, studied philosophy, and worked as a journalist and in the theatre before moving to France. During the German occupation he edited the resistance newspaper Combat, and after the war he became one of the most widely read voices in Europe.

Camus wrote novels, plays, essays and stories that return to a single question: how can people live with dignity in a world that offers no obvious meaning? He is often linked with existentialism, though he rejected the label and preferred to speak of the absurd and of revolt. He received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957. He died in a car accident on 4 January 1960, aged 46. His clear, restrained prose and his moral seriousness still draw new readers.