Albert camus biography timeline book

Resistance, Rebellion and Death

This collection gathers Camus's wartime journalism and later essays on totalitarianism, Algeria and the death penalty.

It offers a surprisingly technical, historical look at themes of grace, freedom and humanist ethics that echo in his later work.

Correspondance, 1932-1960

Spanning nearly three decades, this volume collects letters between Camus and friends, editors, family and fellow writers.
Todd paints a vivid picture of the time and place that shaped Camus--his impoverished childhood in the Algerian city of Belcourt, the sea and the sun and the hot sands that he so loved (he would always feel an exile elsewhere), and the educational system that nurtured him.

Each tale circles solitude, faith and belonging, showing how ordinary people struggle with the feeling of being strangers even in their own homelands.

Algerian Chronicles

Algerian Chronicles collects articles and speeches on Algeria from the late 1930s through the 1950s. His involvement with "Combat" reflected his commitment to the principles of liberty and existential authenticity in the face of immense adversity.

In 1947, Albert Camus published the novel "La Peste" (The Plague), which is set in the Algerian city of Oran.

He is often linked with existentialism, but he described himself more simply as a writer concerned with justice, freedom and the fragile happiness available in ordinary life. In 1957 he received the Nobel Prize in Literature at the age of forty four, then died just a few years later in a car accident at forty six.

Camus was raised in a poor working class family in Algiers after his father was killed in the First World War.

His mother, partially deaf and almost illiterate, cleaned houses to support Camus and his older brother in a cramped apartment. As they weigh scruples against strategy, Camus asks whether it is ever possible to kill for justice without betraying it.

The Possessed

In this large scale stage adaptation of Dostoevsky's novel, Camus brings to life a circle of Russian revolutionaries sliding toward chaos and murder.

"The Fall" exemplifies Camus's artistic engagement with the philosophical notion of the absurd.

Albert Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1957 at the age of 44, becoming the second-youngest recipient at the time. His travels and love affairs become a quiet experiment in whether freedom can make death feel complete.

Selected Essays And Notebooks

This anthology offers a cross section of Camus's shorter work, combining reflective essays with fragments from his private notebooks.

The Plague, set in a quarantined Algerian city, turned an epidemic into an image of both war and persistent human solidarity, following ordinary citizens who choose decency even when they cannot win.

In the nineteen fifties he turned from the problem of suicide to the problem of rebellion. His calculated violence forces courtiers, and readers, to confront what it means to live without moral limits.

Exile and the Kingdom

These six stories follow priests, engineers, exiles and wanderers caught between Europe and North Africa.

At the time of his death, Camus was a prominent literary and philosophical figure, admired for his novels, essays, and contributions to the philosophy of the absurd. As he exposes his own vanity and failures, the monologue becomes an unsettling meditation on guilt, judgment and complicity.

The Myth of Sisyphus

This landmark essay lays out Camus's philosophy of the absurd, asking whether life is worth living in a world without ultimate meaning.

From letters to a German friend to reflections on the guillotine, it shows his insistence on justice without hatred and revolt without murder.

The Just

Set in pre revolutionary Russia, this play follows a group of socialist terrorists preparing to assassinate a grand duke. The essays were written with youthful exuberance and passion, laying the groundwork for the themes that would dominate his later writings.

He notes landscapes, lectures, illness and encounters with intellectuals, revealing both curiosity about the New World and a persistent feeling of distance.

Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism

Based on Camus's 1936 thesis, this early study examines how thinkers like Plotinus and Augustine blended Greek philosophy with Christian doctrine.

This formative period shaped his perspectives on life, death, and morality, which would become central themes in his later works.

In 1936, Albert Camus graduated from the University of Algiers with a degree in philosophy. The play becomes a dark exploration of freedom without brakes, cruelty and self destruction.