Albert Camus (1913-60) was born and raised in French colonial Algeria. After publishing two books of essays on Algeria, Betwixt and Between (1937) and Nuptials (1938), he became a journalist for the newspaper Alger-Républicain. In 1940, the year after the onset of World War II, the writer moved to France, where he contributed to Combat, the leading newspaper of the French Resistance. In 1942 the success of The Stranger catapulted the 29-year-old Camus to immediate fame. That same year, he also published an influential philosophical essay, The Myth of Sisyphus (1942). Camus would go on to author two more novels, The Plague (1947) and The Fall (1956), as well as several plays and further philosophical works, including The Rebel (1951). In 1957 he won the Nobel Prize for Literature at the unusually early age of 44; less than three years later he met sudden and tragic death from a road accident in France. The Stranger remains Camus’ most widely read work. The novel focuses on his lifelong concerns—individual freedom and the quest for meaning in the face of inevitable death. Though set in French colonial Algeria, the novel responds as well to the rise of fascism in 1930s Europe and to important developments in European philosophy.
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