Albert Camus

Albert Camus

• Birth:    November 7, 1913
  
• Death: January 4, 1960
  
• Nationality:   French
• Education:  University of Algiers
  
• Author URL: University of Algiers
• Books Written
• Novels
•      A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse) (written 1936–38, published 1971)
• The Stranger (L'Étranger, often translated as The Outsider. An alternate meaning of "l'étranger" is "foreigner" ) (1942)
• The Plague (La Peste) (1947)
• The Fall (La Chute) (1956)
•  The First Man (Le premier homme) (incomplete, published 1994) 
•  Short Stories
  
•   Exile and the Kingdom (L'exil et le royaume) (collection, 1957), containing the following short stories:
• "The Adulterous Woman" (La Femme adultère)
•  "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" (Le Renégat ou un esprit confus)
• "The Silent Men" (Les Muets)
• "The Guest" (L'Hôte)
• "Jonas, or the Artist at Work" (Jonas, ou l'artiste au travail)
• "The Growing Stone" (La Pierre qui pousse)
  
  Academic theses
  
      Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism (Métaphysique chrétienne et néoplatonisme) (1935): the thesis that enabled Camus to teach in secondary schools in France
  
  Non-fiction books
  
  
  •     Betwixt and Between (L'envers et l'endroit, also translated as The Wrong Side and the Right Side) (collection, 1937)
  •     Nuptials (Noces) (1938)
  •     The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) (1942)
  •     The Rebel (L'Homme révolté) (1951)
  •     Algerian Chronicles (Chroniques algériennes) (1958, first English translation published 2013)
  •     Notebooks 1935–1942 (Carnets, mai 1935 — fevrier 1942) (1962)
  •     Notebooks 1942–1951 (Carnets II: janvier 1942-mars 1951) (1965)
  •     American Journals (Journaux de voyage) (1978)
  •     Notebooks 1951–1959 (2008). Published as Carnets Tome III: Mars 1951 – December 1959 (1989)
  •     Correspondance (1944-1959) The correspondance of Albert Camus and María Casares, with a preface by his daughter, Catherine Camus (2017).
  
  Plays
  
  •     Caligula (performed 1945, written 1938)
  •     The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu) (1944)
  •     The State of Siege (L'État de Siège) (1948)
  •     The Just Assassins (Les Justes) (1949)
  •     Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une nonne, adapted from William Faulkner's novel by the same name) (1956)
  •     The Possessed (Les Possédés, adapted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel Demons) (1959)
  
  Essays
  
  
  •     The Crisis of Man (Lecture at Columbia University) (28 March 1946)
  •     Neither Victims nor Executioners (Series of essays in Combat) (1946)
  •     Why Spain? (Essay for the theatrical play L'Etat de Siège) (1948)
  •     Summer (L'Été) (1954)[23]
  •     Reflections on the Guillotine (Réflexions sur la guillotine) (Extended essay, 1957)[95]
  •     Create Dangerously (Essay on Realism and Artistic Creation, lecture at the University of Uppsala in Sweden) (1957)[96]
• Biography

Camus was born in Algeria (a French colony at the time) to French Pieds Noirs parents. His citizenship was French. He spent his childhood in a poor neighbourhood and later studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. He was in Paris when the Germans invaded France during World War II in 1940. Camus tried to flee but finally joined the French Resistance where he served as editor-in-chief at Combat, an outlawed newspaper. After the war, he was a celebrity figure and gave many lectures around the world. He married twice but had many extramarital affairs. Camus was politically active; he was part of the left that opposed the Soviet Union because of its totalitarianism. Camus was a moralist and leaned towards anarcho-syndicalism. He was part of many organisations seeking European integration. During the Algerian War (1954–1962), he kept a neutral stance, advocating for a multicultural and pluralistic Algeria, a position that caused controversy and was rejected by most parties.

Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He is also considered to be an existentialist, even though he firmly rejected the term throughout his lifetime. From Wikipedia