ALBERT CAMUS

The Myth of Sisyphus

Albert Camus, son of a working-class family, was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent the early years of his life in North Africa, where he worked at various jobs—at the weather bureau, an automobile-accessory firm, a shipping company—to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. He then turned to journalism as a career. His report on the unhappy state of the Muslims of the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938, he ran the Théâtre de l’Équipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, Dostoevsky, and others. During World War II, he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of Combat , then an important underground newspaper. Camus was always very active in the theater, and several of his plays have been published and produced. His books, including The Stranger, The Plague, The Fall, Exile and the Kingdom , and The Rebel , as well as his plays, have assured his preeminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Camus was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960, cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers. 1J8CL/VlJCqnNeahzeHo17Tq4ljaQsriVUHT0vxfLFsJhORF4N2ssOPZgvF7YDy1