Albert Camus

Albert Camus was born on November 7, 1913 in Dréan (then known as Mondovi) in French Algeria.

Albert's father, Lucien, was a poor agricultural worker of Alsatian descent and his mother, an illiterate house cleaner of Spanish descent.

His father was wounded in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I, while serving as a member of a Zouave infantry regiment. Lucien died later in the year from his wounds in a makeshift army hospital.

Albert and his mother lived without many basic material possessions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers.

Camus played as goalkeeper for Racing Universitaire d'Alger until he contracted tuberculosis in 1930. (RUA won both the North African Champions Cup and the North African Cup twice each in the 1930s.)

Tuberculosis also prevented Camus from attending university for two years, though after recovering he enrolled in the school of philosophy at the University of Algiers, financing his studies with a series of odd jobs.

He later recalled that everything he knew about morality and the obligations of men, he learned from football.

The year 1937 saw the publication of Camus' first book, an essay collection called The Wrong Side and the Right Side.

He was active within the French Resistance to the German occupation of France during World War II, even directing the famous Resistance journal, Combat. His code name in the Resistance was "Beauchard".

Camus' first marriage in 1934 was to Simone Hié, who was addicted to morphine. The marriage dissolved in 1936 after he discovered she was in a relationship with her doctor. He married his second wife, mathematician and pianist Francine Faure, in 1940; they had twins, Catherine and Jean, in 1945.

Camus's criticism of communism in L'Homme révolté/The Rebel (1951) led to a protracted quarrel with the philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre.

Philosophically, Camus's views contributed to the rise of a frame of thought known as absurdism, which held that the human search for meaning in life was ultimately futile, as life was inherently meaningless. Despite this, Camus believed that individuals could find purpose and fulfillment through the creation of their own values and the pursuit of personal freedom. He strongly rejected the label of "existentialist," insisting his philosophy of the absurd was distinct from existentialism.

Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1957. He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling. He was also the first author born in Africa to receive the prize.

The prize was awarded largely for Camus' extended essay Reflections on the Guillotine, which argued against capital punishment.

Photograph by United Press International

A keen smoker, Camus named his cat, Cigarette.

He had intense Motorphobia (fear of automobiles), and thus avoided riding in cars as much as possible. Camus instead took trains everywhere, as much as possible. Ironically, he died in a car accident on January 4, 1960 aged 46, with a return train ticket in his coat pocket, after a friend persuaded him to ride in his car.

At the time of his death, Camus was working on an unfinished autobiographical novel, The First Man, about his childhood in Algeria. The manuscript was found in the wreckage of the fatal car accident. His daughter Catherine eventually published it in 1994.

Some historians believe that Albert Camus was killed by KGB agents for his criticism of Stalin's regime.

Source India Today