Albert Camus (; French: [albɛʁ kamy] (listen);
7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a
French philosopher, author, and journalist.
His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy
known as absurdism.
He wrote in his essay The Rebel that his whole
life was devoted to opposing the philosophy
of nihilism while still delving deeply into
individual freedom.
He won the Nobel Prize in Literature at the
age of 44 in 1957, the second youngest recipient
in history.Camus did not consider himself
to be an existentialist despite usually being
classified as a follower of it, even in his
lifetime.
In a 1945 interview, Camus rejected any ideological
associations: "No, I am not an existentialist.
Sartre and I are always surprised to see our
names linked."Camus was born in French Algeria
to a Pied-Noir family and studied at the University
of Algiers, from which he graduated in 1936.
In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International
Liaisons to "denounce two ideologies found
in both the USSR and the USA".
== Life ==
=== Early years ===
Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in
Mondovi (present-day Dréan), in French Algeria.
His mother was Minorcan descent and could
only hear out of her left ear.
His father, Lucien, a poor agricultural worker
of Alsatian descent, 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 from his wounds in a makeshift
army hospital on 11 October.
Camus and his mother, an illiterate house
cleaner, lived without many basic material
possessions during his childhood in the Belcourt
section of Algiers.
In 1923, Camus gained acceptance into the
Lycée Bugeaud and eventually was admitted
to the University of Algiers.
After contracting tuberculosis in 1930, he
had to end his football activities: he had
been a goalkeeper for a prominent Algerian
university team.
In addition, he was only able to study part-time.
To earn money, he took odd jobs: as a private
tutor, car parts clerk, and assistant at the
Meteorological Institute.
He completed his licence de philosophie (BA)
in 1936; in May 1936, he successfully presented
his thesis on Plotinus, "Rapports de l'hellénisme
et du christianisme à travers les oeuvres
de Plotin et de saint Augustin" ("Relationship
of Greek and Christian thought in Plotinus
and St. Augustine"), for his diplôme d'études
supérieures (roughly equivalent to an MA
thesis).
Camus joined the French Communist Party in
early 1935, seeing it as a way to "fight inequalities
between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria."
He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that
he had read Das Kapital, but did write, "We
might see communism as a springboard and asceticism
that prepares the ground for more spiritual
activities."
In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian
Communist Party (PCA) was founded.
Camus joined the activities of the Algerian
People's Party (Le Parti du Peuple Algérien),
which got him into trouble with his Communist
party comrades, who in 1937 denounced him
as a Trotskyite and expelled him from the
party.
Camus then became associated with the French
anarchist movement.
The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced
him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des
Étudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student
Circle) as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist
thought.
Camus wrote for anarchist publications such
as Le Libertaire, La révolution Prolétarienne,
and Solidaridad Obrera (Workers' Solidarity),
the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (National
Confederation of Labor).
Camus stood with the anarchists when they
expressed support for the uprising of 1953
in East Germany.
He again allied with the anarchists in 1956,
first in support of the workers' uprising
in Poznań, Poland, and then later in the
year with the Hungarian Revolution.
Camus was irreligious.
“I do not believe in God and I am not an
atheist.”
~Notebooks 1951–1959.
He told Le Monde in 1956, "I would agree with
Benjamin Constant, who thought a lack of religion
was vulgar and even hackneyed."
=== 
Marriage ===
In 1934, Camus married Simone Hié, but the
marriage ended as a consequence of infidelities
on both sides.
In 1935, he founded Théâtre du Travail (Worker's
Theatre), renamed Théâtre de l'Equipe (Theatre
of the Team) in 1937.
It lasted until 1939.
From 1937 to 1939 he wrote for a socialist
paper, Alger-Républicain.
His work included a report on the poor conditions
for peasants in Kabylie, which apparently
cost him his job.
From 1939 to 1940, he briefly wrote for a
similar paper, Soir-Republicain.
He was rejected by the French army because
of his tuberculosis.
In 1940, Camus married Francine Faure, a pianist
and mathematician.
Although he loved her, he had argued passionately
against the institution of marriage, dismissing
it as unnatural.
Even after Francine gave birth to twins, Catherine
and Jean, on 5 September 1945, he continued
to joke to friends that he was not cut out
for marriage.
Camus had numerous affairs, particularly an
irregular and eventually public affair with
the Spanish-born actress María Casares, with
whom he had an extensive correspondence.
In the same year, Camus began to work for
Paris-Soir magazine.
In the first stage of World War II, during
the so-called Phoney War, Camus was a pacifist.
While in Lyon during the Wehrmacht occupation,
on 15 December 1941, Camus read about the
Paris execution of Gabriel Péri; it crystallized
his revolt against the Germans.
He moved to Bordeaux with the rest of the
staff of Paris-Soir.
In the same year he finished The Stranger,
his first novel, and The Myth of Sisyphus.
He returned briefly to Oran, Algeria, in 1942.
=== Football ===
Camus was once asked by his friend Charles
Poncet which he preferred, football or the
theatre.
Camus is said to have replied, "Football,
without hesitation."Camus played as goalkeeper
for Racing Universitaire d'Alger (RUA won
both the North African Champions Cup and the
North African Cup twice each in the 1930s)
junior team from 1928 to 1930.
The sense of team spirit, fraternity, and
common purpose appealed to Camus enormously.
In match reports Camus would often attract
positive comment for playing with passion
and courage.
Any football ambitions disappeared when he
contracted tuberculosis at the age of 17.
The affliction, which was then incurable,
caused Camus to be bedridden for long and
painful periods.
When Camus was asked in the 1950s by an alumnus
sports magazine for a few words regarding
his time with the RUA, his response included
the following: "After many years during which
I saw many things, what I know most surely
about morality and the duty of man I owe to
sport and learned it in the RUA."
Camus was referring to a sort of simplistic
morality he wrote about in his early essays,
the principle of sticking up for your friends,
of valuing bravery and fair-play.
Camus's belief was that political and religious
authorities try to confuse us with over-complicated
moral systems to make things appear more complex
than they really are, potentially to serve
their own needs.A professional footballer
appears as a character in The Plague and football
is discussed in the dialogue.
=== Revolutionary Union Movement and Europe
===
As he wrote in L'Homme révolté (The Rebel),
in the chapter about "The Thought on Midday",
Camus was a follower of the ancient Greek
'Solar Tradition' (la pensée solaire).
In 1947–48, he founded the Revolutionary
Union Movement (Groupes de liaison internationale
– GLI) a trade union movement in the context
of revolutionary syndicalism (Syndicalisme
révolutionnaire).
According to Olivier Todd, in his biography
Albert Camus, une vie, it was a group opposed
to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement
of André Breton.
For more, see the book Alfred Rosmer et le
mouvement révolutionnaire international by
Christian Gras.
His colleagues were Nicolas Lazarévitch,
Louis Mercier, Roger Lapeyre, Paul Chauvet,
Auguste Largentier, Jean de Boë (see the
article: "Nicolas Lazarévitch, Itinéraire
d'un syndicaliste révolutionnaire" by Sylvain
Boulouque in the review Communisme, n° 61,
2000).
His main aim was to express the positive side
of surrealism and existentialism, rejecting
the negativity and the nihilism of André
Breton.
From 1943, Albert Camus had correspondence
with Altiero Spinelli who founded the European
Federalist Movement in Milan—see Ventotene
Manifesto and the book "Unire l'Europa, superare
gli stati", Altiero Spinelli nel Partito d'Azione
del Nord Italia e in Francia dal 1944 al 1945-annexed
a letter by Altiero Spinelli to Albert Camus.
In 1944, Camus founded the "French Committee
for the European Federation" (Comité Français
pour la Féderation Européenne – CFFE)
declaring that Europe "can only evolve along
the path of economic progress, democracy and
peace if the nation states become a federation."
From 22 to 25 March 1945, the first conference
of the European Federalist Movement was organised
in Paris with the participation of Albert
Camus, George Orwell, Emmanuel Mounier, Lewis
Mumford, André Philip, Daniel Mayer, François
Bondy and Altiero Spinelli.
This specific branch of the European Federalist
Movement disintegrated in 1957 after Winston
Churchill's ideas about European integration
rose to dominance.
=== Death ===
Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of
46, in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand
Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin.
In his coat pocket was an unused train ticket.
He had planned to travel by train with his
wife and children, but at the last minute
he accepted his publisher's proposal to travel
with him.
The driver of the Facel Vega HK500 car, Michel
Gallimard, who was Camus' publisher and close
friend, died five days after the accident.
In August 2011, the Milan newspaper Corriere
della Sera reported a theory that the writer
had been the victim of a Soviet plot, but
Camus' biographer, Olivier Todd, did not consider
it credible.
Camus was buried in the Lourmarin Cemetery,
Lourmarin, Vaucluse, France.
He was the second-youngest recipient, at the
age of 44, of the Nobel Prize in Literature,
after Rudyard Kipling, at the age of 42.He
was survived by his wife and twin son and
daughter, Jean and Catherine, who hold the
copyrights to his work.
Two of Camus' works were published posthumously.
The first, entitled A Happy Death (1970),
featured a character named Patrice Mersault,
comparable to The Stranger's Meursault.
There is scholarly debate as to the relationship
between the two books.
The second was an unfinished novel, The First
Man (1995), which Camus was writing before
he died.
The novel was an autobiographical work about
his childhood in Algeria.
== Literary career ==
The first publication of Camus (co-written
by Jeanne-Paule Sicard, Yves Bourgeois and
Alfred Poignant, and edited by Edmond Charlot)
was Revolte dans les Asturies in May 1936.
This concerned a revolt by Spanish miners
brutally suppressed by the Spanish government.
In May 1937 he wrote his first book L’Envers
et l’Endroit – dedicated to Jean Grenier
and edited by Charlot.
During the war Camus joined the French Resistance
cell Combat, which published an underground
newspaper of the same name.
This group worked against the Nazis, and in
it Camus assumed the nom de guerre Beauchard.
Camus became the paper's editor in 1943.
He first met Sartre at the dress rehearsal
of Sartre's play, The Flies, in June 1943.When
the Allies liberated Paris in August 1944,
Camus witnessed and reported the last of the
fighting.
Soon after the event on 6 August 1945, he
was one of the few French editors to publicly
express opposition and disgust to the United
States' dropping the atomic bombs on Japan.
He resigned from Combat in 1947 when it became
a commercial paper.
After the war, Camus began frequenting the
Café de Flore on the Boulevard Saint-Germain
in Paris with Sartre and others.
He also toured the United States to lecture
about French thought.
Although he leaned left, politically, his
strong criticisms of Communist doctrine did
not win him any friends in the Communist parties
and eventually alienated Sartre.
In 1949, his tuberculosis returned, whereupon
he lived in seclusion for two years.
In 1951, he published The Rebel, a philosophical
analysis of rebellion and revolution which
expressed his rejection of communism.
Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries
in France, the book brought about the final
split with Sartre.
The dour reception depressed Camus; he began
to translate plays.
Camus's first significant contribution to
philosophy was his idea of the absurd.
He saw it as the result of our desire for
clarity and meaning within a world and condition
that offers neither, which he expressed in
The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into
many of his other works, such as The Stranger
and The Plague.
Despite his split from his "study partner",
Sartre, Camus was still categorized as an
Existentialist.
He specifically rejected that label in his
essay "Enigma" and elsewhere.
The current confusion arises, in part, because
many recent applications of existentialism
have much in common with many of Camus's practical
ideas (see: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death).
But, his personal understanding of the world
(e.g., "a benign indifference", in The Stranger),
and every vision he had for its progress (e.g.,
vanquishing the "adolescent furies" of history
and society, in The Rebel) undoubtedly set
him apart.
In the 1950s, Camus devoted his efforts to
human rights.
In 1952, he resigned from his work for UNESCO
when the UN accepted Spain as a member under
the leadership of General Franco.
In 1953, he criticized Soviet methods to crush
a workers' strike in East Berlin.
In 1956, he protested against similar methods
in Poland (protests in Poznań) and the Soviet
repression of the Hungarian revolution in
October.
Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted
capital punishment anywhere in the world.
He wrote an essay against capital punishment
in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, the
writer, intellectual and founder of the League
Against Capital Punishment.
He was consistent in his call for non-aggression
in Algeria (see below).From 1955 to 1956,
Camus wrote for L'Express.
In 1957, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in
literature "for his important literary production,
which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates
the problems of the human conscience in our
times".
Camus remained active and ambitious until
the end of his life.
Financed by the money he received with his
Nobel Prize, he adapted and directed for the
stage Dostoyesvsky's Demons.
The play opened in January 1959 at the Antoine
Theatre in Paris.
It was a critical success as well as an artistic
and technical tour de force: 33 actors, 4
hours long, 7 sets, 24 scenes.
The walls could move sideways to reduce the
size of each depicted location and the whole
stage rotated to allow for immediate set transformations.
Camus put the painter and set decorator Mayo,
who had already illustrated several of Camus'
novels (The Stranger, 1948 edition), in charge
of the demanding task of designing these multiple
and complex theater sets.
== Algeria ==
Camus once confided that the troubles in Algeria
"affected him as others feel pain in their
lungs."In the 1930s, Camus was affiliated
with Left-wing groups like the Maison de Culture
in Algiers which were highly critical of the
French colonial regime's treatment of Algeria's
Arab and indigenous inhabitants, supporting
the Blum-Viollette proposal to grant Algerians
full French citizenship.
His 1938 address on "The New Mediterranean
Culture" represents Camus' most systematic
statement on his views at this time.
In 1939, Camus wrote a stinging series of
articles for Alger Republicain on the atrocious
living conditions of the inhabitants of the
Kabylie highlands, advocating for economic,
educational and political reforms as a matter
of emergency.
In 1945, following the Sétif and Guelma massacre
after Arab revolts against French mistreatment,
Camus was one of only a few mainland journalists
to visit the colony, again writing a series
of article reports on conditions, and advocating
for French concessions and reforms to the
demands of the Algerian people.
When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus
was confronted with a moral dilemma.
He identified with the Pieds-Noirs such as
his own parents and defended the French government's
actions against the revolt.
He argued that the Algerian uprising was an
integral part of the 'new Arab imperialism'
led by Egypt and an 'anti-Western' offensive
orchestrated by Russia to 'encircle Europe'
and 'isolate the United States'.
Although favoring greater Algerian autonomy
or even federation, though not full-scale
independence, he believed that the Pieds-Noirs
and Arabs could co-exist.
During the war he advocated a civil truce
that would spare the civilians, which was
rejected by both sides, who regarded it as
foolish.
Behind the scenes, he began to work for imprisoned
Algerians who faced the death penalty.When
he spoke to students at the University of
Stockholm, he defended his apparent inactivity
in the Algerian question; he stated that he
was worried about what might happen to his
mother, who still lived in Algeria.
This led to further ostracism by French left-wing
intellectuals.
At the time of his death, Camus was working
on an incomplete novel with a strong biographical
component titled The First Man.
The publication of this book in 1994 has sparked
a widespread reconsideration of Camus' allegedly
unrepentant colonialism in the work of figures
such as David Carroll in the English-speaking
world.
== Philosophy ==
=== Existentialism ===
As one of the forefathers of existentialism,
Camus focused most of his philosophy around
existential questions.
The absurdity of life and its inevitable ending
(death) is highlighted in the very famous
opening of the novel The Stranger (1942):
"Today mother died.
Or maybe yesterday; I can't be sure."
This alludes to his claim that life is engrossed
by the absurd.
He believed that the absurd – life being
void of meaning, or man's inability to know
that meaning if it were to exist – was something
that man should embrace.
He argued that this crisis of self could cause
a man to commit "philosophical suicide"; choosing
to believe in external sources that give life
false meaning.
He argued that religion was the main culprit.
If a man chose to believe in religion – that
the meaning of life was to ascend to heaven,
or some similar afterlife, that he committed
philosophical suicide by trying to escape
the absurd.
=== Absurdism ===
Many writers have addressed the Absurd, each
with his or her own interpretation of what
the Absurd is and what comprises its importance.
For example, Sartre recognizes the absurdity
of individual experience, while Kierkegaard
explains that the absurdity of certain religious
truths prevents us from reaching God rationally.
Camus regretted the continued reference to
himself as a "philosopher of the absurd".
He showed less interest in the Absurd shortly
after publishing Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The
Myth of Sisyphus).
To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes
refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring
to "Camus' Absurd".His early thoughts appeared
in his first collection of essays, L'Envers
et l'endroit (Betwixt and Between) in 1937.
Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication
in his second collection of essays, Noces
(Nuptials), in 1938.
In these essays Camus reflects on the experience
of the Absurd.
In 1942 he published the story of a man living
an absurd life as L'Étranger (The Stranger).
In the same year he released Le Mythe de Sisyphe
(The Myth of Sisyphus), a literary essay on
the Absurd.
He also wrote a play about Caligula, a Roman
Emperor, pursuing an absurd logic.
The play was not performed until 1945.
The turning point in Camus's attitude to the
Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters
to an anonymous German friend, written between
July 1943 and July 1944.
The first was published in the Revue Libre
in 1943, the second in the Cahiers de Libération
in 1944, and the third in the newspaper Libertés,
in 1945.
The four letters were published as Lettres
à un ami allemand (Letters to a German Friend)
in 1945, and were included in the collection
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.
=== Ideas on the Absurd ===
Camus presents the reader with dualisms such
as happiness and sadness, dark and light,
life and death, etc.
He emphasizes the fact that happiness is fleeting
and that the human condition is one of mortality;
for Camus, this is cause for a greater appreciation
for life and happiness.
In Le Mythe, dualism becomes a paradox: we
value our own lives in spite of our mortality
and in spite of the universe's silence.
While we can live with a dualism (I can accept
periods of unhappiness, because I know I will
also experience happiness to come), we cannot
live with the paradox (I think my life is
of great importance, but I also think it is
meaningless).
In Le Mythe, Camus investigates our experience
of the Absurd and asks how we live with it.
Our life must have meaning for us to value
it.
If we accept that life has no meaning and
therefore no value, should we kill ourselves?In
Le Mythe, Camus suggests that 'creation of
meaning' would entail a logical leap or a
kind of philosophical suicide in order to
find psychological comfort.
But Camus wants to know if he can live with
what logic and lucidity have uncovered – if
one can build a foundation on what one knows
and nothing more.
Creation of meaning is not a viable alternative
but a logical leap and an evasion of the problem.
He gives examples of how others would seem
to make this kind of leap.
The alternative option, namely suicide, would
entail another kind of leap, where one attempts
to kill absurdity by destroying one of its
terms (the human being).
Camus points out, however, that there is no
more meaning in death than there is in life,
and that it simply evades the problem yet
again.
Camus concludes that we must instead "entertain"
both death and the absurd, while never agreeing
to their terms.
Meursault, the absurdist hero of L'Étranger,
has killed a man and is scheduled to be executed.
Caligula ends up admitting his absurd logic
was wrong and is killed by an assassination
he has deliberately brought about.
However, while Camus possibly suggests that
Caligula's absurd reasoning is wrong, the
play's anti-hero does get the last word, as
the author similarly exalts Meursault's final
moments.
Camus made a significant contribution to a
viewpoint of the Absurd, and always rejected
nihilism as a valid response.
If nothing had any meaning, you would be right.
But there is something that still has a meaning.
— Second Letter to a German Friend, December
1943.
Camus's understanding of the Absurd promotes
public debate; his various offerings entice
us to think about the Absurd and offer our
own contribution.
Concepts such as cooperation, joint effort
and solidarity are of key importance to Camus,
though they are most likely sources of "relative"
versus "absolute" meaning.
In The Rebel, Camus identifies rebellion (or
rather, the values indicated by rebellion)
as a basis for human solidarity.
When he rebels, a man identifies himself with
other men and so surpasses himself, and from
this point of view human solidarity is metaphysical.
But for the moment we are only talking of
the kind of solidarity that is born in chains.
=== The Myth of Sisyphus ===
Despite his opposition to the label, Camus
addressed one of the fundamental questions
of existentialism: the problem of suicide.
He wrote, "There is only one really serious
philosophical question, and that is suicide.
Deciding whether or not life is worth living
is to answer the fundamental question in philosophy.
All other questions follow from that."
Camus viewed the question of suicide as arising
naturally as a solution to the absurdity of
life.
In The Myth of Sisyphus, Camus seeks to identify
the kinds of life that could be worth living
despite their inherent meaninglessness.
=== Views on totalitarianism ===
Throughout his life, Camus spoke out against
and actively opposed totalitarianism in its
many forms.
Early on, Camus was active within the French
Resistance to the German occupation of France
during World War II, even directing the famous
Resistance journal Combat.
On the French collaboration with Nazi occupiers
he wrote: "Now the only moral value is courage,
which is useful here for judging the puppets
and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the
name of the people."
After liberation, Camus remarked, "This country
does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just."
The reality of the bloody postwar tribunals
soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed
himself and became a lifelong opponent of
capital punishment.Camus's well-known falling
out with Sartre is linked to his opposition
to authoritarian communism.
Camus detected a reflexive totalitarianism
in the mass politics espoused by Sartre in
the name of Marxism.
This was apparent in his work L'Homme Révolté
(The Rebel) which not only was an assault
on the Soviet police state, but also questioned
the very nature of mass revolutionary politics
and ideas.
Camus continued to speak out against the atrocities
of the Soviet Union, a sentiment captured
in his 1957 speech The Blood of the Hungarians,
commemorating the anniversary of the 1956
Hungarian Revolution, an uprising crushed
in a bloody assault by the Red Army.
=== Philhellenism, debts to Greek classical
thought ===
One further important, often neglected component
of Camus' philosophical and literary persona
was his love of classical Greek thought and
literature, or philhellenism.
This love looks back to his youthful encounters
with Friedrich Nietzsche, his teacher Jean
Grenier, and his own sense of a "Mediterranean"
identity, based in a common experience of
sunshine, beaches, and living in proximity
to the near-Eastern world.
Camus' Diplomes thesis (roughly like an MA
thesis in most anglophone countries) was on
the transition between classical Greek and
Roman, and Christian culture, featuring chapters
on the early Church, gnosticism, Plotinus
and Saint Augustine's "second revelation",
bringing Greek philosophical conceptuality
to Christian revelation.
Camus' early essay collection Noces (Nuptials)
features essays set amidst classical Roman
ruins; as the Myth of Sisyphus and The Rebel
(which takes as its hero Prometheus) both
are rooted in Camus' classical paideia.
The culmination of the latter work defends
a "midday thought" based in classical moderation
or mesure, in opposition to the tendency of
modern political ideologies to exclusively
valorise race or class, and to dream of a
total redemptive revolution.
Camus' conception of classical moderation
also has deep roots in his lifelong love of
Greek tragic theatre, about which he gave
an intriguing address in Athens in 1956.
He appealed to Queen Elizabeth II for mercy
for the young Greek anti-colonial freedom
fighter Michalis Karaolis, from Kypros (Chypre,
Zypern), who was sentenced to death in 1956.
Camus's letter was acquired at auction by
Nasos Ktorides and donated to the National
Struggle Museum in Nicosia.
== Works ==
=== Novels ===
The Stranger (L'Étranger, often translated
as The Outsider) (1942)
The Plague (La Peste) (1947)
The Fall (La Chute) (1956)
A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse) (written
1936–38, published posthumously 1971)
The First Man (Le premier homme) (incomplete,
published posthumously 1995)
=== 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)
=== Non-fiction books ===
Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism (1935)
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)
Notebooks 1935–1942 (Carnets, mai 1935 —fevrier
1942) (1962)
Notebooks 1943–1951 (1965)
Notebooks 1951–1959 (2008).
Published as Carnets Tome III : Mars 1951
– December 1959 (1989)
Algerian Chronicles (2013)
Albert Camus, Maria Casarès.
Correspondance inédite (1944-1959) Avant-propos
de 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)
The Ancient Greek Tragedy (Parnassos lecture
in Greece) (1956)
Reflections on the Guillotine (Réflexions
sur la guillotine) (Extended essay, 1957)
Create Dangerously (Essay on Realism and Artistic
Creation, lecture at the University of Uppsala
in Sweden) (1957)
=== Collected essays ===
Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961) – a
collection of essays selected by the author,
including the 1945 Lettres à un ami allemand
(Letters to a German Friend) and A Defense
of Intelligence, a 1945 speech given at a
meeting organized by Amitié Française
Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
Youthful Writings (1976)
Between Hell and Reason: Essays from the Resistance
Newspaper "Combat", 1944–1947 (1991)
Camus at "Combat": Writing 1944–1947 (2005)
Albert Camus Contre la Peine de Mort (2011)
== References ==
== Further reading ==
=== 
Selected biographies ===
Philip Malcolm Waller Thody, Albert Camus:
A Study of His Work (1957) (OCLC 342101)
Germaine Brée, Camus (1959) (ISBN 1-122-01570-4)
Jean-Claude Brisville, Camus (1959) (ISBN
9782070210367)
Emmett Parker, Albert Camus: The Artist in
the Arena (1965) (OCLC 342770)
Adele King, Camus (1966) (ISBN 0-05-001423-4)
Vicente de 
Paulo Barretto, Camus: vida e obra (1970)
Herbert R. Lottman, Albert Camus: A Biography
(1979) (ISBN 3-927258-06-7)
Patrick McCarthy, Camus: A Critical Study
of His Life and Work (1982) (ISBN 978-0241106037)
David Sprintzen, "Camus: A Critical Examination"
(1988) (ISBN 0-87722-544-3)
Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Willi Glasauer,
Scenes from World Literature and Portraits
of Greatest Authors (1988) (Círculo de Lectores)
Adele King, Camus's "L'Étranger": Fifty Years
On (1992) (ISBN 978-0333532942)
André Comte-Sponville, Laurent Bove, Patrick
Renou, Camus : de l'absurde à l'amour : lettres
inédites d'Albert Camus (1995) (ISBN 9782909096414)
Alain Vircondelet / Photographies : collection
Catherine et Jean Camus, Albert Camus: vérité
et légendes (1998) (ISBN 9782842771089)
Stephen Eric Bronner, "Camus: Portrait of
a Moralist" (1999) (ISBN 0-81663283-9)
Howard E. Mumma, Albert Camus and the Minister
(2000) (ISBN 1-55725-246-7)
Olivier Todd, Albert Camus: A Life (2000)
(ISBN 0-7867-0739-9)
Neil Helms, Harold Bloom, Albert Camus - Bloom's
BioCritiques (2003) (ISBN 9780791073810)
Pierre-Louis Rey, Camus: L'homme révolté
(2006) (ISBN 9782070318285)
Elizabeth Hawes, Camus: A 
Romance (2009) (ISBN 9780802118899)
Catherine Camus, Albert Camus : solitaire
et solidaire (2009) (ISBN 9782749910871)
Robert Zaretsky, Albert Camus: Elements of
a Life (2010) (ISBN 9780801479076)
Virgil Tănase, Camus (2010) (ISBN 9782070344321)
Catherine Camus (avec la collaboration d'Alexandre
Alajbegovic et de Béatrice Vaillant), Le
monde en partage: Itinéraires d'Albert Camus
(2013) (ISBN 9782070140947)
Sean B. Carroll (2014).
Brave Genius: A Scientist, a Philosopher,
and Their Daring Adventures from the French
Resistance to the Nobel Prize.
Broadway Books.
ISBN 978-0307952349.
Heiner Wittmann, Albert Camus: Kunst und Moral
(ISBN 3-631-39525-6)
Robert Zaretsky, A Life Worth Living: Albert
Camus and the Quest for Meaning (ISBN 9780674724761)
== External links ==
Fonds Albert Camus - Cité du livre d'Aix
en Provence
Wikilivres has original media or text related
to this article: Albert Camus (in the public
domain in South Korea)
Albert Camus.
Selective and Cumulative Bibliography
Société des Études Camusiennes
Raymond Gay-Crosier Camus collection at University
of Florida Library
Albert Camus at Curlie
Albert Camus Society UK
Asociación de Estudios Camusianos en España
Works by Albert Camus at Faded Page (Canada)
Works by Albert Camus at Open Library
Camus, BBC Radio 4 discussion with Peter Dunwoodie,
David Walker & Christina Howells (In Our Time,
Jan. 3, 2008)
