Albert Camus

Albert Camus was born in French Algeria on 7 November 1913, grew up poor, and studied philosophy at the University of Algiers. When the Germans invaded France in 1940 he was in Paris; he tried to flee, then joined the Resistance and became editor-in-chief of the outlawed newspaper Combat. After the war he was a celebrity, lecturing worldwide, marrying twice, taking many lovers, and writing The Stranger, The Plague, The Myth of Sisyphus, The Fall, and The Rebel — works that fed the philosophy called absurdism even as he rejected the existentialist tag. He opposed Stalin and Soviet totalitariani…