Albert Camus

<p>Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913, in Mondovi (now Dréan), French Algeria, to an impoverished French-Algerian (pied-noir) family. His father Lucien was killed in the First Battle of the Marne in 1914 when Camus was an infant. Raised in working-class Belcourt by his illiterate, nearly deaf mother and strict grandmother, Camus escaped extreme poverty through public education, mentored by his devoted primary school teacher Louis Germain.</p><p>Excelling at the University of Algiers in philosophy and literature, Camus was struck with tuberculosis at age seventeen, ending his athletic ambitions as a goalkeeper. In the late 1930s, he worked as an investigative journalist for <em>Alger Républicain</em>, writing courageous exposés on the severe deprivation of the indigenous Berber Kabyle population. During World War II in Paris, Camus joined the French Resistance, editing the clandestine newspaper <em>Combat</em> under Nazi occupation.</p><p>In 1942, Camus published his foundational masterworks: the novel <em>The Stranger</em> (L'Étranger) and the philosophical essay <em>The Myth of Sisyphus</em> (Le Mythe de Sisyphe), introducing his concept of the Absurd—the tension between human desire for inherent meaning and the silent, indifferent universe. Unlike nihilists, Camus argued that humanity must passionately embrace existence through revolt, freedom, and solidarity: 'One must imagine Sisyphus happy.' His subsequent masterpiece <em>The Plague</em> (La Peste, 1947) allegorized fascism and celebrated unheralded civic compassion. Awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957, Camus tragically died in an automobile accident near Sens on January 4, 1960, leaving behind the manuscript of his autobiographical novel <em>The First Man</em>.</p>