Author and philosopher Albert Camus died in a car crash in 1960, aged just 46. But the existential, moral and political issues Camus’ writings address still trouble us today.
Born in colonial Algeria, Albert was the first member of the Camus family to read, let alone attend university. (His father died before he turned one, his mother did housework to support her family). In the 1930s, he became a playwright, journalist and novelist. After moving to France in 1940, he joined the Resistance against Nazi occupation.
In 1942, Camus shot to fame with his novel The Stranger, a dramatisation of the homicidal implications of modern nihilism (the loss of a sense of meaning). That year, he wrote a disconcerting essay on the ancient Myth of Sisyphus exploring the question of whether, in a world without God, suicide could be rationally justified.
